No laughing matter | 9 June 2016

Rossini is the meat-and-two-inappropriately-shaped-veg of summer opera; he’s the wag in the novelty bow tie, the two satyrs shagging enthusiastically among the lupins and lobster on the cover of this year’s Glyndebourne programme. His comic bel canto frolics are the natural soundtrack to this off-duty opera-going, a champagne-perfect combination of frothy plots and fizzing coloratura. So why are they so hard to pull off?

Perhaps it’s the pressure of expectation. It has been more than 30 years since Glyndebourne last staged Il barbiere di Siviglia, and hopes were high for Annabel Arden’s new production. For the first half-hour it looks as though they’re going to be met. Enrique Mazzola’s affable, patrician overture skips along with understated ease — no hint of slapstick here — keeping the London Philharmonic Orchestra on the balls of their feet. Joanna Parker’s designs dissolve ye olde Seville into something more crisply contemporary, glancing towards the 18th century while standing somewhere nearer to the 1950s — all graphic shapes and deep colours.

But into this stylish frame steps a production so keen to avoid cliché, to walk around the operatic banana skins and avoid the whoopee cushion, that it forgets to bring the humour. In place of Rossini’s farce we get something more abstract, more surreal. Harpsichords descend from the sky; Basilio’s cassock belches the smoke of hidden hellfires; Almaviva is pursued by a troupe of masked commedia dell’arte characters who may or may not be real. But just as you wouldn’t laugh out loud at Dalí’s melted clocks or elephant-tuba, so there’s no real urge to here. Why direct a comedy if you’re so insecure about its jokes that you chuck them all out and start from scratch?

Arden is fortunate in her cast, however, who go a long way towards supplementing any dramatic deficiencies.