Last Updated on October 16, 2026
A Razor-sharp Barber of Seville at Glyndebourne
4.0 out of 5.0 stars
Tonight saw the fourth revival of Annabel Arden’s 2016 production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville at Glyndebourne. I saw last summer’s revival and the cast and band sang and played their socks off. Would this Autumn Season’s iteration be able to match those heights?
Director Arden co-founded Complicité, the groundbreaking British theatre company with its trademark use of mime and physical theatre. In relation to the Barber she has spoken of “taking inspiration from the Spanish tradition of the grotesque and the marvellous and making a synthesis of it.” The show opens with designer Joanna Parker’s cyan-coloured curtains framed by an irregularly shaped burnt orange proscenium arch. The set is covered with gorgeous blue and white Moorish tiles covered with Matisse-like bird motifs. The set cleverly morphs from exteriors to interior scenes with balconies, windows, staircases and wardrobes emerging as necessary.The message is clear we are in Seville, but it is a fantasy Seville located in the director and designer’s imaginations.
Rossini’s two-act Opera buffa masterpiece was written in a hurry in 1816 and is one of those works that both transcends its time and defines its genre. The Barber of Seville is based upon Pierre Beaumarchais’s French play of the same name with a previous and hugely successful operatic version composed by Giovanni Paisiello in 1782. Rossini had asked Paisiello’s permission to use the story, which was granted, but it didn’t stop the elder composer’s fans from disrupting the opera’s opening night.
The bare bones of the Commedia dell’ Arte inspired plot fall into the pre-determined model. Rosina, the daughter of a Duke, is the ward of the aged Dr Bartolo who tries to stop her from interacting with the outside world by keeping her cooped up in his house. Dr Bartolo has romantic designs on Rosina and plans to marry her for her sizeable dowry. Rosina falls for handsome but penniless student Lindoro, who serenades her from the outside of Bartolo’s house.
Lindoro is the aristocrat Count Almaviva who wants Rosina to love him for himself rather than for his title or wealth. Almaviva enlists the help of Figaro, the local barber and general fixer about town, to win Rosina’s hand from Bartolo. After two acts of unlikely shenanigans the young lovers are united in marriage. As well as the gender politics that drive the plot, issues of class are similarly embedded in the story with aristocratic entitlement and bourgeois fiscal power inevitably colliding with the comedically cunning servant and service classes.
Catalan baritone Lluís Calvet i Pey’s is more rumbunctious than last year’s Figaro, Germán Olvera, who was cooler if just as self-confident. But this is no bad thing and makes the character less of a sly operator and more of a self-made man, taking every opportunity to ingratiate his way into the personal business of the wealthy for his own profit. Calvet i Pey’s rich-toned baritone is splendid and he delivers the character’s patter in his signature aria “Largo al factotum” with a robust sense of self-belief.
Chinese mezzo-soprano Hongni Wu impressed as Siébel in Gounod’s Faust at the Royal Opera House where she also showed of her comedy chops as the servant Kuchtík in Rusalka. She takes a step up here in the role of the entitled ward Rosina, both fiery and coy in her Balenciaga-inspired dresses. Wu has a limpid vocal tone and a technique that makes Rossini’s ornamentations seem easy, eating up the technically challenging Act 1 aria “Una voce poco fa.” This feels like a characterisation that will grow and grow.
Wu is well-matched with Maltese tenor Nico Darmanin as Count Almaviva (Lindoro). Wearing a sleazy long silver coat, Darmanin has a fine bel canto voice and a good line in narcissistic comic acting which was subtly applied in the Act 1 aria “Se il mio nome saper voi bramate.”
Powerful Italian baritone Fabio Capitanucci, reprising his role from the 2025 production, gives his Dr Bartolo a controlling sense of threat. When he sings “A un dottor della mia sorte”, the aria in which he lays down the law to his errant ward, we are inclined to take him seriously.
Decked out in a Father Brown-esque black Cappello Romano hat and cassock, Turkish bass Cumhur Görgün brings a portentous edge to the character of the eminently corruptible music teacher Don Basilio. The slander aria ‘La calumnia è un venticello’ is delivered with verve and energy and watching a priest self-combust never gets old.
Irish soprano Ailish Tynan (Berta) owns the part of Bartolo’s exasperated servant Berta both at Glyndebourne and at Covent Garden. She brings the house down with her feature aria “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie” and a knowing flash of her suspenders. George Reynolds, formerly a member of Glyndebourne Youth Opera, was a strong Fiorello, the character who opens the opera and then disappears. Let’s hope that Reynolds doesn’t do the same.
Director Annabel Arden incorporates lots of physical gags into the show most of which come off. Three actor/dancers keep appearing in different guises and are all fine performers, One scene features multiple harpsichords being delivered then deconstructed in a surrealist montage and revival director Angelo Smimmo seems to have rebalanced their input from being annoying to diverting.
Chloe Rooke conducted the Glyndebourne Sinfonia with verve and humour and even had a couple of well-delivered spoken lines herself. The Glyndebourne Chorus makes a mighty sound when roused and overall balances were well-controlled. There was some occasional rhythmic raggedness in the ensemble patter songs, but overall this was a musically solid production.
Hongni Wu, Lluís Calvet i Pey and Cumhur Görgün were all making their Glyndebourne debuts tonight with the 2026 Autumn Season providing a fantastic showcase for emerging talent. The season also includes the first revival of director Mariame Clément’s Festival 2025 The Marriage of Figaro (see our review), community opera Spark and concert performances of Beethoven’s Symphony No. 9 and Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet ‘Fantasy Overture’. Glyndebourne’s Christmas Concerts are also returning, featuring opera choruses, orchestral classics and singalong carols for all ages (5-13 December).
The Barber of Seville
15 October to 7 November
Glyndebourne, Lewes, East Sussex, BN8 5UU
Check out our guide to the 2026 autumn/winter opera season.
All photos © Glyndebourne Productions Ltd. Photos: Craig Fuller
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