The Barber of Seville is a love story. It is a story of two people, Rosina and a disguised Count Almaviva, overcoming obstacles to be together. Through the help of an ingenious barber they outwit Bartolo, Rosina’s guardian, and are united. The manner in which this story unfolds is funny, passionate, and quite frankly, totally absurd. Rossini was a master at this type of storytelling. His music makes all of these elements come alive and makes the absurd plausible. That being said, I have never really liked this opera. All of the productions I had ever seen, except for the 1974 John Pierre Ponelle film and a few other exceptions, are mostly displays of all the shtick and schlock habits that performers and directors have picked up during the years. For me, these productions only elicit what I call “courtesy laughter.” That is, laughter which is an obligatory response to cover up the pain that you feel watching something that you wish were funny, but really isn’t.

When I was in college I had a professor who once told me, “Opera is a like a trip to a museum. We preserve the past. We show people a time gone by.” Now, while I love museums, there is a huge difference between visiting a building that preserves the past work of artists and attending a live theatrical experience in which the audience is an active participant. In fact, I think this is the crux of one of our issues in trying to usher opera into the future. But I digress. This analogy, however, brings up an interesting point. With both the museum and theatrical experience being different but equal in enjoyment, with an opera as famous as The Barber of Seville, the typical production should be as fulfilling as it is when going to a see a favorite painting at MoMA or The Philadelphia Museum of Art. Unfortunately, it is often like seeing a horrible reproduction of a Monet in a motel room. So, it is in the spirit of both the museum curator and the contemporary artist searching for a way to reach his audience that this production was born.