Similar Stories to Sf Opera Gives ‘barber’ A Welcome Reprise on Bing News

The production that opened a brief run at the War Memorial Opera House on Wednesday night was almost a carbon copy of the 2013 version — though with a little mix-and-match from the original, which featured two separate casts in alternation. In the pit, Giuseppe Finzi conducted with even more crispness and vivacity, choosing brisk tempos and making them stick; the overture was a terrific combination of fleet-footed rhythms and buttery textures. Emilio Sagi’s Spanish-themed production, with characters making poker-faced entrances and exits from beneath a raised stage platform in Llorenç Corbella’s unit set, remains a charmer, and Roy Rallo, directing the revival, has spiced it up with an array of comic stage business that makes the proceedings all the more enticing. The remainder of the cast proved as exuberant and vocally rewarding as ever, from Lucas Meachem’s robust and smooth-toned Figaro to the precise but unfettered coloratura of Daniela Mack’s Rosina. The principals joined forces for a particularly enthralling rendition of the trio near the end of Act 2, in which they almost escape from their predicament but keep being pulled back by the demands of operatic form. [...] as always, mezzo-soprano Catherine Cook was on hand to lend her knowing comic genius to the role of Berta — and to sing “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie,” that testament to the follies of love, with winning freedom. No doubt the usual malcontents will complain about “Barber” coming back to the War Memorial Opera House so soon, and so unaltered.