10/04/14 – The Barber of Seville – 1:00pm

San Francisco Opera

OPERA: Il Barbiere di Siviglia (in Italian)
COMPOSER: Gioachino Rossini

With the help of a wily barber, a strong-willed young woman outwits a lecherous old man in this eternally fresh comic masterpiece featuring Rossini’s wittiest, most charming score and two charismatic casts. One features Isabel Leonard, “a lively stage presence and a radiant lyric voice” (The New York Times); Lucas Meachem, who displayed “vocal brilliance” and “theatrical panache” in the title role of San Francisco Opera’s Don Giovanni (2011) (San Francisco Chronicle); and rising tenor Javier Camarena, praised by Opera News for his “exquisite finesse.” The other equally stunning cast features Daniela Mack, who sings Rossini “with technical command and expressive ease” (Opera News); the “smooth-voiced” Audun Iversen (The New York Times); and Alek Shrader, whose “bright singing” is matched with “matinee-idol good looks” (New York Times). Resident Conductor Giuseppe Finzi, who leads the San Francisco Opera Orchestra with “vigor and clarity” (San Francisco Chronicle), returns to the podium.

Sung in Italian with English supertitles
Approximate running time: 3 hours, 10 minutes including one intermission

CAST:
Fiorello Ao Li
Count Almaviva Javier Camarena
Doctor Bartolo Alessandro Corbelli
Figaro Lucas Meachem
Rosina Isabel Leonard
Don Basilio Andrea Silvestrelli
Berta Catherine Cook
Ambrogio A.J. Glueckert
Notary Andrew Truett
An Officer Hadleigh Adams

CONDUCTOR: Giuseppe Finzi
STAGE DIRECTOR: Emilio Sagi

San Francisco Opera Orchestra and Chorus
CHORUS DIRECTOR: Ian Robertson

Production photos: Cory Weaver