Opera Paris – Rossini’s Le Barbier de Seville. May 29, 2012.

Opera Bastille, Paris, France.  Section Parterre (Seat E44, E115).

Story.  See before.

Conductor – Marco Armiliato.  Il Conte D’Almaviva – Antonino Sirgusa, Bartolo – Maurizio Muraro, Rosina – Karine Deshayes, Figaro – Tassis Christoyannis, Basilio – Carlo Cigni, Fiorello – Vladmimir Kapshuk, Berta – Jeannette Fisher, Un ufficiale – Lucio Prete.

We met up with Kin and his family in Paris, but couldn’t get them interested to see an opera; so Anne and I ended up going by ourselves.  The weather in Paris has been nice for the three days we have been here (today is May 30), shirt-sleeves weather, generally not too hot.

The building is relatively new (I don’t have reliable web access in the hotel I’m at, so can’t do the research), and is now the main venue for operas for Opera Paris.  The traditional opera house is still in use, and we saw a display at Musee d’Orsay, and can usually pick it out if we are at a high point (Basilicia Sacre Coeur, e.g.).  It remains impressive, I wonder if we will get to visit it the next couple of days.

I got tickets mostly because I wanted to try the opera at a different location, and because Paris has had a long opera tradition.  I also read somewhere that subtitles are available in both French and English.  Turns out tonight they had it only in French, which made the story basically unintelligible, even though I had some idea of what the storyline is.  Suffering from a huge jet-lag (or lack of sleep, sometimes they are the same), I just had a hard time keeping awake and had trouble concentrating while awake.

The sets are about the same level of complexity as what I remember of the Met production we saw a few years ago.  Certainly the rotating stage aspect was the same.  The costume and building designs were basically middle-eastern, which generally worked for this production.  Only problem is how many people from the area have “Count” in their titles.  The only possible reason is there is this “off script” segment they put in where Lindoro (Count Almaviva) became Football (Soccer) Player No. 10 and hammed it up a bit with his football techniques.  My son told Anne the actually person wearing No. 10 is Moroccan French – that would explain the many flags on stage at one point also.  While it certainly was interesting, I didn’t think the overall quality of the opera needed the division.

The acoustics of the hall is great.  Perhaps that’s because of our seats, or because the main hall is on the small side.  While sometimes I wish the voices would be a bit more sonorous, they generally projected clearly into our seats.  The orchestra seems a bit on the small side, but it produced a good sound.  The overture was quite enjoyable, the conducting having given it a slightly different interpretation.

There were these two men who, soon after they sat down in their seats, began to move to other empty seats, climbing over rows of seats at times.  The seats they had during the first half were claimed by their rightful owners after the intermission, so they ended up in their original seats.  While they are atypical (after all, they were two out of thousands), their behavior somehow adds to my view of Parisienne’s rudeness.

We didn’t get out of the concert until about 10:40 pm.  It was about 11:30 pm when we got back.  The metro was surprising busy this time of day.  Also, we happened to pass by the old opera house (Garnier) the next day.  It is an extremely imposing and ornate building.  I don’t know what the acoustics and seats are like, but certainly would like to be able to pay it a visit some time.