In Search of the Perfect Haircut: An Anecdotal Trip to the Barbershop

Close Shaves

Typical Barber Shop ca. 1970s

Oh, brother! It’s that time of the month again, when one’s mane starts to look a bit straggly and those sideburns are in dire need of a wee trim.

Did you ever get the feeling that no matter where you went or whatever hairstyling establishment you happened to frequent, you could never get the perfect haircut to suit your taste, style and looks?

That’s how it was for me (uh, when I had a full mop of hair, that is). In my youth I wandered through a host of hair-clipping joints and local barbershops, always hopeful but never fully satisfied with the results.

That elusive search for the perfect haircut can take on the semblance of a hunt for the Holy Grail. This is something that has taken me years of aggravation to understand and appreciate, that never-attained but forever longed-for journey of discovery. It can take the shape of various forms and in various manifestations. And don’t you dare think that women have it easier! Why, it’s quite the opposite! Getting the right hairdo is just as frustrating for them as it for us — maybe more so.

The art of caring for one’s coiffure is, indeed, just that: an unreachable and strictly unattainable achievement in craft as well as the latest fashion trends. In ancient times, men and women of means often had their hair braided (only to prove that they could), while they just as regularly could have had their noggins shaved. These served as viable options for many a generation until the arrival of the Swinging Sixties and Seventies. Before (and, in hindsight, many years afterward), it was considered common practice to keep the hairline closely cropped.

Actually, the mania for long hair and full-facial whiskers started with the early settlers and the notorious mountain men, i.e. those rugged individualists in the masculine mold of your average Jeremiah Johnson. A bit later, during the Civil War years, extreme head and facial hair were the norm, due to the lack of equipment or, more likely, the dearth of individuals available to do justice to the style of the period.

About every other generation or so, the business of keeping one’s tresses lengthy or shortened undergo alteration. This piece is about those times when the novelty of keeping your hair long eventually wears off. It’s then that we’re faced with the act of doing something about it. And where does one go? Where else but the neighborhood barbershop!

The Barber of the Block

The search for a decent haircut began, basically enough, in one’s hometown. And there were plenty of enterprises to choose from, from Coy Powell’s Barbershop to Aunt Irma’s Place. These small business shops served the locals well for any number of years.

Indeed, the most fascinating aspect of all these myriad enterprises was their colorful epithets, used primarily as an attraction to potential customers: Joe’s Barbershop, The Italian Barber, Florio’s Hair Styling Emporium, Ye Olde Barber Shoppe (note the old English lettering), Your Tonsorial Palace — these were familiar and ongoing concerns geared mostly to males.

You might even call them mini-history museums. As a matter of fact, much has changed since the heyday of the “shave and a haircut, two bits” mantra of yore. I “fondly” remember the sound those crude ancient hair-cutting utensils used to make: obtrusive, whirring noises that smacked of another era entirely when getting a haircut was deemed a rite of passage for young men. However, for kids it was one long, laborious wait.

The racial makeup of the local barber pool ran the gamut of ethnicities, from Eastern European and Eurasian to Caribbean and South American. Many of our homegrown haircutters proved to be of Hispanic origin, while some were decidedly Mediterranean in looks and lineage (Italian, Greek) or Middle Eastern (Arabic and Lebanese, even Turkish). I’ve known a few Cuban and Puerto Rican barbers in my time, along with a smattering of African Americans. None of them were young by the standards of the day, and practically all of them (with rare exceptions) were non-natives.

Interestingly, Carmen Miranda, the entertainer known as the Brazilian Bombshell, had a father, José Maria Pinto da Cunha, who when he immigrated to Rio de Janeiro from Portugal took up the barbering trade in order to make ends meet. Regrettably for Seu Pinto, in those turn-of-the-century times engaging in a profession of cutting men’s hair was considered a rung or two above that of a streetwalker (go figure!).

How times have changed…

Robert Fiance Beauty School

A day in a hair stylist’s life: Robert Fiance Beauty School

As it happened, choices were limited as to where one could go to get a decent trim. An alternative appeared in the early to mid-Seventies, the so-called beauty academy or haircutting school. A relatively benign and unassuming storefront, for the most part the Robert Fiance Beauty School (established between the 1930s and 1950s) was staffed, on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx (where I grew up), by youthful and moderately “experienced” beauty salon students — all eager to please.

I was frequently attended to by both decent and poor hair-cutting aspirants on my monthly Saturday sojourns to the school. I usually got my money’s worth, certainly nothing that I would describe as an outright embarrassment.

The shop was clean and well run, and the charges were below your average rate for a haircut in high-priced New York. The downside of going to such a place was that you ran the risk of getting scalped, both figuratively and literally. It was best to get a second or third opinion before venturing forth on your own.

It paid, too, to get a few reliable recommendations from those who had frequented the better known establishments in one’s immediate vicinity. That’s how I happened to run across the next item on my list, Manzana Hair Cutters.

Manzana Hair Cutters

The name was simply a business moniker, what we call a DBA (or “Doing Business As”), a legitimate enterprise — unless served as a front for other activities.

On the “good word” of a customer of a place I used to work at in the mid-1970s (a policeman I’ll call “Bill,” or the guy with the oh-so-cool haircut), I took time off one day to go several blocks down the street and up a steep walkway to a second-floor loft on the Lower East Side.

I had to knock several times before someone decided to let me in. The person who opened the door seemed a trifle surprised at my presence. I told this suspicious individual that I was looking for Mr. Manzana. He rudely answered, “There’s no Mr. Manzana here.” I was taken aback by his snappy response, but plowed on nonetheless. When I informed him that “Bill” was the guy who sent me, he allowed me to enter.

No sooner did I set foot in the salon when I suppressed a mild shock at what I saw. This wasn’t your recognizable, everyday beauty salon or haircutting parlor, but a ramshackle warehouse. The majority of the so-called “stylists” were either gay or transvestites, something I wasn’t prepared to deal with back then. Still, I remembered how nice my buddy “Bill” looked and how much he praised Manzana’s abilities, so I swallowed what pride I had left and patiently waited my turn.

The head stylist finally came over and, before I could open my mouth, began to berate me for being a half-hour late. This forced me to assume a defensive position. I told this irate fellow that I was coming to his establishment on my lunch hour, that our business demanded we serve our customers first before taking off for lunch (not that he cared one whit for his customers).

Not impressed with my explanation, in a huff he pointed to one of the other stylists and told me to go wait in his chair. The other stylist, who was just as annoyed as the owner by my tardiness, took one look at me and launched into a verbal invective about having to give up HIS lunch hour to serve my needs.

Oh, well, so much for sympathy from a bunch of devils …

As for the haircut, it wasn’t any great shakes, if you get me drift. Nothing special or extraordinary, more of a cut and a snip and a vague swirl of the scissors; the stylist swatted my head this way and that, and hither and yon. I’ll put it to you this way: it was more show than substance. In the end, I got nowhere near the preferential treatment my friend “Bill” had received in this place.

After that little escapade, I never went back to Manzana’s.

National Geographic Special

Traditional head massage at an Indian hair parlor

Many years later, I happened upon a 2002 National Geographic Special devoted to the search for the Afghan girl, the one with the soulful green eyes on that famous 1985 cover of their magazine.

The special was about one of the photographers, Steve McCurry, who nearly two decades later went to a faraway locale in Afghanistan in pursuit of the mysterious “cover girl.”

What piqued my interest most was the fact that the photographer had heaped praise on a local haircutting parlor where, after a haircut and a vigorous shave, “they gave you this wonderful head massage.” The little thirteen-year-old boy who administered McCurry’s massage looked as if he was kneading the man’s head like bread dough.

At the time of this special, it made me wonder to what extremes some people will go in order to get what they were after — in this instance, a relaxing massage from a young boy. At least no one yelled at Mr. McCurry for being two decades late.

Women’s Beauty Salons

Speaking of young boys, I remember, as a small child, waiting endlessly — and impatiently — waiting, waiting, waiting with my little brother in a woman’s beauty salon, while our mother would sit under this massive hair dryer for a period that never seemed to end.

Mom would wear these enormous hair curlers, which the attendant at the salon had spent an untold number of hours placing in strategic positions on her head. She looked like she had a head of extra large eyes.

Women’s Beauty Parlor, 1961

That made no sense to me, why women would spend an entire afternoon (or all day, for that matter, usually on Saturdays) under a broiling contraption that spewed nothing but hot air for hours on end.

As for myself, I do remember getting a wonderful “hairstyle” in West Palm Beach, Florida (again, back in the late 1970s), AND by a female hairstylist. It was there that I first came across the marvelous hair products of a company called Redsen, or some such name. I forget now what the products were, but they were supposed to have kept my hair from drying out.

Regardless of the theory behind Redsen’s products, I was already at the point of losing most of what was left on my head. Soon, there would no longer be any reason for me to spend money on hair products. Descriptions such as “hair design,” or “hairstyle for men,” were useless for someone who had hardly any hair on his noggin.

Floyd the Barber

Not pleased with real-life barbers? What about the fictional variety? Well, there was only one person I could think of in a pinch: Floyd Lawson, the barbershop owner, who was strictly speaking a minor character on the Andy of Mayberry television series, also known as The Andy Griffith Show.

Played by character actor Howard McNear (1905-1969), Floyd fulfilled a purpose, fundamentally to provide the comic relief from the everyday tensions of the main characters, i.e. Sheriff Andy Taylor (Griffith), Deputy Barney Fife (Don Knotts), Andy’s Aunt Bea (Frances Bavier), Andy’s son Opie (Ron Howard), the town drunk Otis (Hal Smith), and other denizens of the fictional town of Mayberry, North Carolina.

Mind you, one rarely saw Floyd give an “actual” haircut and shave; he would mainly go through the motions, although I distinctly remember him having a shop with your standard issue barber’s chair and waiting room.

Floyd the barber (Howard McNear) with Sheriff Andy Taylor (Andy Griffith) on The Andy Griffith Show

Not so strangely, the fictitious Floyd was inspired by a real-life barber, Russell Hiatt, who lived and worked in Mount Airy, North Carolina, the actual town where the star of the show, Andy Griffith, had grown up in.

Floyd was “honored”, somewhat, by an early Kurt Cobain song and music video titled “Floyd the Barber.” In it, Kurt shows up at Floyd’s barbershop for a shave and a haircut, only to be greeted by the mad merchant in a wild takeoff of Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

In the video’s main section, Floyd, Andy, Barney, Aunt Bea, Opie and Otis all conspire to murder Cobain in the barber chair, a really “hair-raising” episode in Kurt’s body of work.

Filmed Barbers

Unlucky with TV shows? Well, then, let’s try the movies!

From John Huston’s The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), where Humphrey Bogart gets more than he bargained for at a cut-rate Mexican tonsorial parlor (wait till Bogie puts on his hat!), to legendary Marshall Wyatt Earp (a particularly laconic Henry Fonda) and his fancy, shmancy after-shave lotion in John Ford’s 1946 Western classic My Darling Clementine (“What kind of a crazy town is this?”), cinematic representations of barbers and their shops abound.

Too close for comfort: scene from John Ford’s My Darling Clementine (1946)

There’s a scene in Warner Brothers’ Dodge City (1939), directed by Michael Curtiz, where Errol Flynn’s British-accented Wade Hatton is seated in a barber chair, waiting for a shave and a mustache trim. The barber, played by the rickety Clem Bevans, is game for completing the task when he’s interrupted by the intrusion of the film’s villains, Jeff Surrett (Bruce Cabot) and his evil gunslinger Yancey (a particularly repellent Victor Jory).

Did you think the handsome good guy Wade was going to sit still for a nice, relaxing shave and a haircut with these mugs staring him down? Not on your life! While his road buddy Rusty (Alan Hale) is sitting in a makeshift tub in the next room, bad guy Surrett insists on freshening up with his weekly Saturday bath. Shaky barber Clem hesitates but Wade comes to the rescue. He gets up out of the chair, straps on his gun belt and confronts both Surrett and Yancey with some old-fashioned straight talk.

Later on, Wade is back in the saddle again, or rather in the barber’s chair, when another of those tough hombres appears in the doorway, threatening to take him outside for “a little talk” with the boys. Hah, I’ll bet!

Wade takes care of him handily and in the twinkling of an eye. Sitting back down in the chair, Wade tries to resume the conversation where he had left off. He asks the barber what was it he was rambling about, taxes? The barber is too nervous to talk and too shaky to trim Wade’s mustache. Luckily for him, Wade is as handy with a blade as he is with the gift of gab. He is more than capable of giving himself a trim, which negates the need for a barber.

What’s Opera, Doc?

Moving on to the musical side of things, we have, of course, the mellifluous Figaro, the most famous haircutter in all opera. He can be found in several works for the lyric stage, the first by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo da Ponte, the four-act The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), based on the second play in the trilogy by French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.

The first play, The Barber of Seville, spawned two operatic versions written several years apart, the first by Giovanni Paisiello, and the second and more popular one by Gioachino Rossini. Both operas pay precious little attention to Figaro’s plying of his trade.

In fact, in the Mozart opus, Figaro is no longer a barber but is now Count Almaviva’s valet and servant, with nary a haircut or shave in sight. However, in Act II of Rossini’s version (sometimes played as a third act), Figaro attempts to shave the cranky Dr. Bartolo, guardian of his lovely young ward Rosina. In most stage depictions of this scene, Figaro deposits a generous helping of lather over Bartolo’s features in order to divert his prying eyes from the billing and cooing taking pace with the young couple in love, i.e. Almaviva (disguised as a music master) and Rosina.

I always get a big kick out of this scene, which is most amusingly done to Rossini’s quicksilver scoring. Any opera house worthy of the name can be counted on to keep the audience in stitches at this point.

Believe it or not, there was a sequel to the Mozart work, composed by Jules Massenet, called Cherubim, based on the secondary character of Cherubino. Now, the character of the playwright Beaumarchais, along with Figaro, Susanna (whom he marries), the Count, Rosina, Cherubino, and several illegitimate offspring, all make their presence felt in the 1991 composition The Ghosts of Versailles, with music by John Corigliano and text by William M. Hoffman. Unfortunately, there are no “close shaves” in this work, but the pre-headless form of Marie Antoinette does put in a ghostly appearance.

Another operatic hairstylist, the Barber of Baghdad is of German origin. Known as Der Barbier von Bagdad in its native land, the music for this comic opera was composed by Peter Cornelius. Although once popular in Europe, the title character Abdul Hassan (bass) has fallen on hard times. He shares many qualities with his Spanish counterpart, Figaro, in that Hassan acts as a go-between the two lovers, Nureddin (tenor) and Margiana (soprano).

Musical Tastes

Running counter to the romantic sentiments found in Mozart, Rossini and Cornelius, we now come to the notorious modern musical Sweeney Todd, made more famous than he ought to have been by Stephen Sondheim’s darkly sinister yet melodious score for the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.

Advertisement for Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street

A sort of latter-day Jack the Ripper, on whom he was partially modeled, the revenge-seeking Sweeney (real name: Benjamin Barker) provides the tasty filler for the otherwise disgusting meat pies concocted by the loony landlady with a rolling pin, Mrs. Lovett, his partner in crime.

There’s an associated side story as well, in the young sailor Anthony’s attraction to Johanna, the beautiful ward of the dissipated Judge Turpin. Certainly the plot of The Barber of Seville had been co-opted (or lifted), in part, by book writer Hugh Wheeler and composer/lyricist Sondheim in concocting this rather sinister brew. When one thinks of Anthony as a working-class Almaviva, Johanna as a Victorian-era Rosina, Turpin as an amoral Bartolo, and Sweeney (which goes without saying) as an Industrial Revolutionary Figaro swinging his razor high, the connections become obvious if, in the long run, abhorrent.

For a bit of animated levity, Warner Bros. Studio turned out a marvelous series of Bugs Bunny cartoons in the 1950s. One of the funniest is titled Rabbit of Seville, directed by Chuck Jones in direct homage to the Rossini opera. That “Wascawy Wabbit” disguises himself as the local hairstylist so as to escape the clutches of trigger-happy hunter Elmer Fudd.

Bugs Bunny gives Elmer Fudd the “treatment” in Rabbit of Seville (1950)

Fudd gets the treatment of a lifetime, however, while waiting in Bugs’ barber chair. The rabbit mounts Elmer’s forehead for an extended foot massage (in juxtaposition to that Afghan boy’s kneading of the photographer’s scalp). All this, and more, to the bouncy tune of the opera’s Overture!

Bravo, Signor Figaro, ma bravo!!!

Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

Having gone through every conceivable permutation (and then some) of the where and how of the local barber shop, I have come to the conclusion that it will have to remain an obscure dream — always within reach but forever eluding our grasp.

As we all know, the fun is in the chase. And like the art of collecting, you spend a lifetime in pursuit of the Grail, but you never, ever find it. If you did, then your search would have ended and, by design, so has your life.

You wouldn’t want that to happen, now would you?

Copyright © 2017 by Josmar F. Lopes

Yee Haw! A Met Opera Year-End Round Up with ‘The Barber of Seville’, ‘Die Fledermaus’, and ‘Anna Bolena’ (Part One)

Some Productions are Best Left Unheard

Almaviva (David Portillo), Figaro (Elliot Madore) & Isabel Leonard (Rosina) in The Barber of Seville (Photo: Karen Almond)

There’s a lot happening lately over at Lincoln Center Plaza in New York, as well as right here in our little old hometown of Raleigh. Some events are, by their physical proximity, fairly easy to get to; others are much too far away. But wherever they take place, hearing and seeing opera takes precedence (for this opera buff, at least).

Let’s take the Metropolitan Opera, if you please. Last season, the house was plagued with a relentless flu epidemic that devastated the carefully programmed Saturday matinee broadcasts. One had to keep away at all costs to avoid the virus. The miserable wintry weather was partially to blame. Such as they were, both these unforeseen eventualities left their mark on the casts of several important revivals, among them Bizet’s Carmen and both Verdi’s Don Carlo and Un Ballo in Maschera.

Nevertheless, the shows must and did go on as scheduled. However this season, with a milder than average early winter and relatively pleasant daytime temperatures (that drastically changed this weekend, as we all know), the Met broadcasts have been entertaining for the most part, and without incident.

Still, my own feeling about some productions is that they are better left unheard. By that statement, I mean that the Met Opera’s revival of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, on December 26, 2015 (known in England as Boxing Day), happened to be the company’s sliced-and-diced and everything-is-oh-so-nice, English-language concoction by poet, librettist and literary critic J.D. McClatchy. This is one presentation that, by its very nature and execution, I needed to pass up.

Isabel Leonard as the minx Rosina in Rossini’s Barber of Seville

Having written at length about this version in a prior post (see the following link: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/opera-review-the-barber-of-seville-in-english-shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits/), and blown my own gasket over its egregious cuts to such sure-fire elements as Don Basilio’s “La calunnia” and those marvelously timed Rossinian ensembles, I can only state the obvious: this is no way to woo young audiences over to opera.

With that bit of frustration put to rest, let me add that Rossini’s masterpiece is easily and without reservation his most admired work by far. It’s been in the public eye for well over two centuries, and has lost none of its sheen or its ability to gladden the ear and lift the spirit with those sparklingly inventive melodies.

The Barber has firmly established itself as a paean to popular culture, with Figaro’s entrance aria, “Largo al factotum” (“Make way for the jack-of-all-trades”), having long ago joined the ranks of Carmen’s “Habañera,” Escamillo’s “Toreador Song,” and Alfredo and Violetta’s “Brindisi” as the most frequently played of operatic numbers.

Our own North Carolina Opera will be staging The Barber of Seville this coming April 2016, which I will be very much looking forward to attending. If it’s anything like the NCO’s successful run of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, it will surely be a hit. Readers can be assured of a much longer treatment and review when the time comes. For now, I’ll refrain from further comment.

I do want to mention the Met’s radio cast, which included the resourceful Rosina of Isabel Leonard (she’s made a career out of this part, along with the trouser role of Cherubino in Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro), tenor Taylor Stayton as Almaviva, baritone Elliot Madore as Figaro, bass Valeriano Lanchas as Dr. Bartolo, and bass Robert Pomakov in what was left of the reduced role of Don Basilio. Anthony Walker was the conductor in Bartlett Sher and Michael Yeargan’s colorful production.

A “Bat” Not Worth Taking

Susanna Phillips (Rosalinde) & Paulo Szot (Falke) in Act II of Die Fledermaus

One opera I missed last year, but this time got to hear in full was the live January 2, 2016 broadcast of Johann Strauss Jr.’s Die Fledermaus, in another English-language presentation translated by producer Jeremy Sams (lyrics) and Douglas Carter Beane (dialogue). Well, I asked for it.

For the background and plot of this riotous work, please see my previous review of this production when it was new (follow the link: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2014/02/09/die-fledermaus-eugene-onegin-and-lelisir-damore-tragedy-tomorrow-comedy-tonight-a-triple-threat-at-the-met/). Suffice it to say, I am far from waxing enthusiastic over this piece. Although it was a favorite of Old Vienna and neighboring venues in its glory days, the forced sentiments and comedic double-dealings (including outright attempts at cuckolding) are somewhat passé by modern standards. You’ll find about as much if not more dirty laundry by tuning into any episode of Keeping Up With the Kardashians.

In any case, the Met put its best foot forward by having their beloved music director, the ailing maestro James Levine, preside on the podium. The move, in my view, was strictly overkill. His legendary care and accustomed expertise was in no way challenged by the frothy, more lighthearted requirements of Die Fledermaus. We’re not talking Wagner here, or Richard Strauss (no relation to Johann) or Mahler, nor even Schoenberg or (heaven help us) Bernd Alois Zimmermann, whose unbelievably bombastic and immensely orchestrated Die Soldaten (“The Soldiers”) has become in recent years the surprise hit of European opera houses.

But enough about Europe, let’s get back to Manhattan (which, in 2008, mounted a production of Die Soldaten at the Park Avenue Armory) and the broadcast performance of Die Fledermaus, which starred Susanna Phillips as the wacky accident-prone Rosalinde, Lucy Crowe as the chirpy maid Adele, and Susan Graham (always a welcome and valuable commodity) in the walk-on part of Prince Orlofsky, another trouser role.

Ms. Phillips & Toby Spence as Gabriel von Eisenstein

On the male side of the ledger, we have pop-eyed British tenor Toby Spence as Gabriel von Eisenstein, Dimitri Pittas as Alfred the Italian singer, Paulo Szot as Dr. Falke, the titular “Bat” of the opera, Alan Opie as prison director Frank, and Broadway actor and comic mime Christopher Fitzgerald as the drunken turnkey Frosch. How could you miss with a talented crew such as this? Well, let me count the ways…

Seriously, this was a most distressing affair, topped by a total waste of Levine’s talents. Sure, there were individual bright spots and moments of sheer orchestral delight. But they were few and far between to be effective over the long haul, and clearly unnecessary in a work that tends to play itself. A lively overture and a Ländler waltz or two simply weren’t enough to merit the maestro’s presence. As I mentioned above, this isn’t Wagner, but Fledermaus is a long enough opera to slog through without having to put up with one-too-many dull spots.

Christopher Fitzgerald as rowdy jailor Frosch

Back in the mid-1980s, director Otto Schenk’s tradition-bound production of Die Fledermaus (along with an old-fashioned Ring cycle and an attractively adorned Tannhäuser, which we will soon be hearing) was a clear Met audience favorite. It at least mixed an authentic Viennese flavor with vintage champagne, principally in the New Year’s Eve party and jailhouse sequences. Schenk himself put in an appearance and made a particularly raucous and funny Frosch. But the jokes and hijinks in this American-English version fell flatter than a cheap bottle of imitation Dom Perignon.

At the least, Christopher Fitzgerald got some mileage out of the “inebriated sot” of a jailor, a tired old routine about as old as vaudeville itself. He joined such past cut-ups as Sid Caesar, Jack Gilford, Dom DeLuise, and Danny Burstein in the part. Fitzgerald even offered a bit of leftover schnapps to hopeful audience members, which delivered a goodly number of guffaws from the crowd. Of the two soprano leads, Ms. Crowe got the loudest applause for her stratospheric coloratura turns as Adele, while Ms. Phillips proved the more adept at a flowing cantilena line in the part of the scheming Rosalinde.

However, Susan Graham’s take on the pokerfaced prince (as an Earth Mother par excellence, mind you) left me cold. She appeared wearing a white fright wig, which made her a dead-ringer for Siberian baritone Dmitri Hvorostovsky. Well, why not? Orlofsky is supposed to be a bored Russian prince (out of the Eugene Onegin mold, perhaps?), but this sort of cartoonish display can quickly get out of hand (i.e., considering the current state of Hvorostovsky’s health). I’m sure everyone got the joke the first time around. How I long to hear someone as classy as Ms. Graham in a truly praiseworthy part: as Dido again in Berlioz’s Les Troyens, or Charlotte in Massenet’s Werther. Oh, the pain…

Susan Graham as the bored and bizarre Prince Orlofsky in Die Fledermaus

Another waste of a talented performer’s time and taste came with Brazilian baritone Paulo Szot’s limited assignment as Dr. Falke. With no major solo to boast of or anything worthwhile to show off this classically trained singer’s artistry, Mr. Szot melted into the woodwork, as did Mr. Opie’s smoothly vocalized Frank and Spence’s veddy British Eisenstein (here excruciatingly called “Gay-bree-ell” by the cast members).

Queens native Dimitri Pittas’ exuberance as Alfred, the lovesick and highly-strung tenor, overcame his apparent struggle with the part’s requisite high notes. Those top A’s poured forth with some effort and were anything but easily produced. He did display a winning comic persona, which was small comfort indeed in what was essentially a not-so-festive atmosphere.

Time to break out that fake Dom Perignon. I’d settle for some schnapps…

(To be continued…)

Copyright © 2016 by Josmar F. Lopes

A Bel Canto Bonanza (Conclusion) — Rossini a Day Keeps the Doctor Away: ‘La Cenerentola’ and ‘The Barber of Seville’

When One Season Ends, Another Begins

Joyce DiDonato in La Cenerentola (Ken Howard / Met Opera)

That’s how it is with opera: as soon as we marvel at how well the cream of the bel canto crop has performed on the air, along comes a production that completely undoes whatever positive impressions came before.

I’m referring to an once-in-a-lifetime transition whereby the 2013-14 Metropolitan Opera radio season ended with a bang with Gioachino Rossini’s La Cenerentola, the Italian version of the Cinderella story, while the 2014-15 season began with a thud via the broadcast of the same composer’s The Barber of Seville. Two comic-opera delights which, on paper, featured ideal casts — yet only one of them came out holding the glass slipper, or gold bracelet in the case of Rossini’s work.

Let’s discuss that work, the May 10th broadcast of La Cenerentola starring the fabulously gifted American mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato as Angelina, our fairy-tale heroine and a major interpreter of this repertoire. The other cast members included bel canto specialist Juan Diego Flórez as Don Ramiro (or Prince Charming), Luca Pisaroni as Alidoro, Alessandro Corbelli as Don Magnifico (the mean stepfather), Pietro Spagnoli in his broadcast debut as Dandini, and Rachelle Durkin and Patricia Risley as, respectively, the vain stepsisters Clorinda and Tisbe. The conductor for the afternoon was Fabio Luisi, the Met’s principal podium master.

This 1997 production is by Cesare Lievi, with charming box sets and costumes by designer Maurizio Balò. As any follower of this infectious piece knows, Rossini and his librettist, Jacopo Ferretti, grounded their adaptation of Charles Perrault’s enduring tale less in the magical arena and more in the everyday drudgery of its title character. Not that enchantment was banished altogether from this realm, but instead of the usual “hocus-pocus” and “bibbidy-bobbadi-boo” prestidigitations we have the behind-the-scenes intrigue of Ramiro’s wise tutor, Alidoro, who takes on the gutsy role of the Fairy Godfather (not Godmother), but sans magic wand.

Angelina, as she’s called here, wins the hand of her prince through a kind and loving heart as well as modest displays of sympathy and largesse for her loutish step-parent, Don Magnifico, and his two insipid daughters. This is as it should be, for the subtitle of the piece, “ossia la bontà in trionfo” (“or the triumph of goodness”), tells listeners all they need to know about this kind-hearted character’s motives. As corny as it may sound, Monsieur Perrault, the creator of the original tale, and Walt Disney himself I daresay, would have approved of these harmless alterations.

What matters most, of course, is the music, which follows the general pattern of Rossini’s earlier The Barber of Seville — i.e., fast tempos, rapid-fire ensembles, and soft-to-loud passages — and how it enhances or detracts from our enjoyment of the piece, whether or not it was successfully transmitted by the artists involved. On that front, we need have no concerns, for this performance of La Cenerentola proved to be one of the Met’s finest to date.

Don Ramiro (Juan Diego Florez) with Angelina (Joyce DiDonato)

Ms. DiDonato, who debuted at the house in 2005-06, has been performing the Rossini catalogue for nearly two decades. Ergo, her spirited Angelina is one of this singer’s premium assignments, a role she has vested with personality, affinity and persuasiveness at every turn. Physically, she personifies both the scullery-maid aspects as well as the “storybook princess” elements called for in the text. Her joyful second act rondo, “Non piu mesta accanto al fuoco” (“Now farewell, dark days of weeping”), which readers may recall was borrowed from Rossini’s Barber, was a vocal triumph of the first order. All her roulades and repeats, along with runs up-and-down the scale, were carried out with refinement and skill, as worthy a depiction of her artistry as any I’ve heard to date.

DiDonato was deftly seconded by her partner, Peruvian tenor Juan Diego Flórez, one of only a handful of artists at the Met (the others being Javier Camarena and Lawrence Brownlee) who have successfully maneuvered through the vocal rigors of Prince Ramiro’s tricky tessitura. It’s not just about hitting the notes that have made this singer (and the above-mentioned team of performers) so special but his knack for conveying a regal demeanor combined with ease of flow, while also spewing forth those abundant Cs and Ds in alt.

Lately, Juan Diego has been venturing into heavier tenor repertory. We need not fear for his vocal life, however, since the heaviest he’s been involved with (so far) is Rossini’s Arnold in Guillaume Tell. And from all reliable reports, he has acquitted himself with honor. Fortunately for the listener, Flórez has kept that nimbleness and buoyancy throughout his range, absolute requisites in this preeminent company. He and Ms. DiDonato are two artists who never seem to force their naturally lyrical instruments to points beyond their limits. To find and hear such savvy professionals in this day and age is a wonder indeed; that they were accompanied by singers of near-equal stature is more than we can expect.

It’s certainly been proven that a native Italian, in those mile-a-minute Rossinian patter songs, with rare exceptions can manipulate those arias’ complicated lyrics better than most non-Italians. And audiences were blessed with not two but THREE such sturdy talents: the bassos Pisaroni, Corbelli and Spagnoli. Alidoro is the mover and shaker of the piece, and Signor Pisaroni, whom I’ve heard previously in Handel and Mozart, was fluid in his runs and exceedingly adept at both the highest and lowest ranges of this part.

The same can be said for Signor Corbelli, a full-voiced, plumy buffo in the tradition of Fernando Corena and Paolo Montarsolo, but with a lighter timbre more reminiscent of baritone Renato Capecchi — a singer well acquainted with tragic and comic parts. New to me was Signor Spagnoli, who complemented these fine gentlemen as a vocally commanding Dandini. We can thank Rossini for that: he’s provided his lower-voiced characters with an embarrassment of riches in this work — take your pick of the litter, fellows!

The two stepsisters, sung by Durkin and Risley (sounds like an ambulance-chasing law firm, doesn’t it?) played their parts to risible perfection. Maestro Luisi let the music flow, with plenty of snap, crackle and pop in the pit and in the immensely satisfying ensembles, of which there are plenty. His attention to detail and knowledge of how this work should be played and sound assisted in bringing down the curtain on a most magical season replete with luscious gardens of vocal delights.

The Forecast: Dull with Continuing Dullness

Isabel Leonard, Lawrence Brownlee & Christopher Maltman in The Barber of Seville

So what happened between May and December? Something must have gotten lost in translation during the long summer-to-fall hiatus. I am still trying to wrap my arms around the meager quality of the Met’s The Barber of Seville broadcast of December 6, 2014, the first of the Saturday afternoon 2014-15 radio transmissions.

Perhaps it was the flu that got everybody bugged, or maybe a really bad case of repertory negligence. Whatever the reason, there was no excuse for the piteous display of vocalism that ran rampant during this Bartlett Sher production of one of the repertoire’s best-loved masterworks.

A notorious failure at its 1816 premiere, under the banner of Almaviva, ossia l’inutil precauzione (“Almaviva, or the Useless Precaution”) so as not to conflict with an earlier adaptation by composer Giovanni Paisiello, Il Barbiere di Siviglia, to cite its original Italian title, was based on a trilogy of plays by French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, whose The Marriage of Figaro (the second work in the trilogy) became the basis for Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.

While Paisiello’s opera was still being lauded, Rossini and his collaborator, the poet Cesare Sterbini, decided to rework Paisiello’s piece, much to the dismay of his followers, to include Signor Paisiello himself. That infamous fiasco of February 20th when The Barber premiered at the Teatro Argentina in Rome has been thoroughly discussed by scholars ad absurdum, its faults explored and re-examined as to why the work flopped at the outset.

As near as can be determined, the performers were thrown off by the audience’s negative reaction to what they heard and saw; that is to say, not so much by the music itself as to the lack of polish on the part of those same performers. That may sound like heresy to readers, but it was a common situation during those raucously unsound times. Verdi and Wagner — and Puccini, too, if truth be told — had to contend with any number of disruptive forces, among them unruly patrons, inferior casts, listless conducting, substandard playing, and subpar surroundings.

Our modern expectations of professionalism and the superior degree of musicianship that, today, has been taken for granted were in short supply back then, even in such esteemed institutions as La Scala and Bayreuth. Rossini, Donizetti, and Verdi and their ilk, along with an army of musicians slaving away in the “galleys” as they were known, faced this problem on a daily basis. About the best they could do was to deal with the lack of preparedness head-on and as the issue arose. Would that some of their spunk and ingenuity to overcome the many hurdles thrust upon them have rubbed off on their present-day counterparts!

Act I ensemble of The Barber of Seville

With that lead-in in mind, the broadcast of The Barber of Seville featured the redoubtable Lawrence Brownlee as an extremely accomplished Count Almaviva, Christopher Maltman as the jack-of-all-trades Figaro, Maurizio Muraro as a tongue-tied Dr. Bartolo, Isabel Leonard as his ward Rosina, and Paata Burchuladze as the mealy-mouthed music master Don Basilio. Michele Mariotti was the conductor for this performance and, as we’ve noted in prior posts, the haste-makes-waste maestro whose fast-paced leadership of this and other bel canto works lent considerable verve to the proceedings, if without pause for respite.

That’s not to say that artistry was left in the dust, but on this broadcast I got the impression that some of Saturday’s participants were “winging it” on their own. I’ve mentioned before about presenting complete performances of standard and non-standard bel canto items, which has much improved over the years, especially with regard to early and middle-period Verdi.

With Rossini’s Barber, the more there is of this piece, the better-sounding it becomes (to me, at least). Small cuts here and there, such as the brief scene with Fiorello after Figaro and Almaviva’s three-quarter-time duet in Act I, scene i; the comic interplay earlier on with Dr. Bartolo and Rosina at her balcony; or the extended exchange between Bartolo, the sneezing Berta and a yawning Ambrogio, while providing grist for the slapstick-comedy mill, can be easily dispensed with and suffer no damage to the overall plot.

A Matter of Casting

But the biggest bone I have to pick is some of the slipshod quality of the major performers themselves, by which I mean the egregious casting of Paata Burchuladze as Basilio and the blustering Bartolo of Maurizio Muraro. In last year’s discussion of J.D. McClatchy’s English-language version of the opera (see the following link: https://josmarlopes.wordpress.com/2013/01/02/opera-review-the-barber-of-seville-in-english-shave-and-a-haircut-two-bits/), I complained furiously about his translation as not being riotous enough or nearly as intelligible to novices as it needed to have been.

This time, I found grievous fault with Burchuladze’s vocal mannerisms, which were abysmally below the expected level for an artist of his longevity and repute. His rise to prominence in the 1980s and subsequent appearances with Luciano Pavarotti and Herbert Von Karajan, in addition to participation in various Verdi performances at La Scala and thereabouts, paved the way for his 1989 Met debut as Ramfis in Aida. A solo recording of scenes from Russian and Italian opera (well received, but with reservations as to his lack of dramatic thrust), as well as DVDs of La Scala performances, fueled the notion that here was another Fyodor Chaliapin in the making. Uh, not quite!

One critic claimed his Don Basilio was better acted than sung, which may have given rise again to comparisons with Chaliapin. This is disparaging to Chaliapin, who until a ripe old age had a superbly disciplined and mellifluous voice, preserved for us on old 78s and on film. The unfulfilled promise of the once-potent Paata, however, who struggled with both ends of Basilio’s “La calunnia” — normally, a sure-fire showstopper for any bass worth his low F — spilled over into Mr. Muraro’s undisciplined, sloppy, and irritating interpretation of Bartolo’s “A un dottor della mia sorte” (“A doctor of my reputation”).

Artists of the caliber of Salvatore Baccaloni and Melchiorre Luise, Corena and Montarsolo, Sesto Bruscantini, Enzo Dara, Angelo Romero, or this country’s John Del Carlo, have all executed this vocal tirade with more panache and comic timing than Muraro could muster. To top it off, he concluded the torturous piece by gasping for air while wavering perilously off pitch. This could have been part of the show, but on the radio Muraro sounded over-parted.

In like manner, Burchuladze’s stab at an unwritten high note to “La calunnia” was calumnious in itself, in the way it completely blew the composer’s cadenza to the four winds. And to think he was following in the illustrious footsteps of such past luminaries as Chaliapin, Ezio Pinza, Tancredi Pasero, Cesare Siepi, Giulio Neri, Italo Tajo, Nicolai Ghiaurov, Samuel Ramey, and Ferruccio Furlanetto. Ah, it pains the ear…

In this company, Mr. Maltman’s sharply refined Figaro and Ms. Leonard’s neatly vocalized but mature-sounding Rosina, escaped the bad notices, but neither did they shine as they normally would have. I did like Maltman’s basic timbre, though, which was right for the playful town barber; but Leonard’s inability to convey exuberance on the radio was disheartening.

Lawrence Brownlee as Count Almaviva

The best performance of the day, dear readers, I have saved for last: Lawrence Brownlee outshone his colleagues with a masterfully phrased, delectably sung and ingratiating traversal of the wily Almaviva whose name, as translated, means “lively soul.” That he was! Although short of stature, Brownlee gave a master class in Italian diction and coloratura leaps and runs. He was also an estimable ensemble player who put to shame some of the so-called veterans on display in that vast Met Opera auditorium. I can’t say enough good things about this enthralling young artist, one of the finest interpreters of bel canto anywhere.

Brownlee, an African American tenor from Youngstown, Ohio, has made a specialty of this repertoire. He stands out from the not-so-crowded field of contenders by talent and ability alone, as one of the opera world’s most sought-after voices.

Thus, Brownlee both ended and began another Met Opera broadcast season in fine fettle; likewise, we should consider ourselves privileged to have heard the likes of Javier Camarena and Juan Diego Flórez, mentioned in the same breath as Brownlee. And may we continue to hear more of these supremely confident young artistes.

In an historic meeting of the minds, Beethoven once urged Rossini to “Remember to give us more Barbers.” I say to the Met, “Remember to provide the singers capable of singing them!”

Copyright © 2014 by Josmar F. Lopes

Opera Review: ‘The Barber of Seville’ in English – Shave and a Haircut, Two Bits

Listening to opera on the radio is a completely different experience from seeing it on the stage. I first noticed this dichotomy when, after years of hearing the regular Saturday afternoon Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on the air, I finally witnessed a live presentation of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor at the New York State Theater. It was the most thrilling and life-altering experience of my early theater-going career. To hear those fresh young voices rise above the orchestra pit, as Donizetti’s music cut straight to the bone (and to my stomach), was a cherished moment I will long remember.

Later, when videos, DVDs and Blu-ray Discs™ became far more accessible for opera fans to enjoy I realized there was another aspect to live performances: with the addition of subtitles and supertitles, one could more fully understand what all the posing and strutting were about. Up to that point, I had spent a small fortune amassing an enviable collection of open-reel and cassette tapes, as well as LPs geared toward recapturing that initial excitement of live theater in the flesh. Now, I could wallow in this newfound treasure trove of works with renewed enthusiasm and in the comfort of my home. In addition, I came away with a much clearer idea of the difficulties inherent in staging and producing live opera.

I find it funny, then, as well as somewhat ironic, that after so many decades of theater-going and record/video collecting I’m back to where I started every time I hunker down in front of my stereo to tune in to the next in the continuing series of Saturday broadcasts. On the other hand, my ears have grown accustomed to hearing opera on this vastly reduced scale, which helps bring this “unseen” dimension into sharper focus as I assess the caliber of each week’s performance.

This is why reviewing the Metropolitan Opera’s 2012-2013 radio season requires a bit of tempering on my part, with the knowledge that I lack the all-important visual element, eventually filled in of course with Public Television’s delayed high-definition broadcasts. But for now, readers should take note of the above caveat as I make do with the essentially auditory portions of our program.

A Barber for the Masses

Alek Shrader & John Del Carlo (minnesota.publicradio.org)

This brings me to my latest review of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. An English-language adaptation of the Pesaro-born composer’s delightful nineteenth-century masterwork, it was broadcast on December 22, in director Bartlett Sher’s crowd-pleasing production. The main problem here wasn’t so much the non-colloquial Italian as it was the unintelligible English.

The new translation by poet and literary critic J.D. McClatchy, whose ground-breaking Seven Mozart Librettos: A Verse Translation should be in every opera lover’s library, while solid and workmanlike in print was unworkable in execution. An admirable substitution for Cesare Sterbini’s imaginative Italian original (an acrobatic verbal exercise, if truth be told) this new version was, in a word, a letdown. It just wasn’t funny enough, at least to my mind, which led to my biggest deception with the entire enterprise — and that is, its inability to be understood.

One could overlook this basic point if the opera had been performed to near-perfection (a rare commodity indeed, even in the best of times), but the worst that could possibly be said for McClatchy’s adaptation was that it was frustratingly inappropriate for its target audience, i.e., New York City youngsters and their parents.

This being a children’s matinee performance, the other major complaint, from my part, was the cutting of more than an hour’s worth of music from this superb score. The end result wasn’t anywhere near what Rossini had envisioned. Indeed, this was not The Barber of Seville as we’ve come to know it, but “half scenes” and “bits and pieces” of scenes and arias from one of the standard repertoire’s most astutely-crafted creations.

One might as well call this The Cut-Rate Barber of the Met, for all the good the translation did to untangle the opera’s complicated plot. I should’ve known something was up the minute the overture sounded. Hah, did I say overture? Not even close! What was left of this world famous piece was chopped up and spit out in record time. Things went from bad to worse when the titular barber entered the picture. It’s a shame, really, to have heard Figaro’s tuneful showstopper, “Largo al factotum,” sliced up and shorn of nearly half its delectable vocal patter, while the same character’s effervescent duet with Count Almaviva whizzed by in nothing flat. The result being there was no setup, no substance, just words… and words on top of words. Ugh, a stylistic nightmare! You can sense my frustration with this show.

Isabel Leonard, Shrader, Del Carlo & Rob Besserer (stageandcinema.com)

Among the vocalists, only veteran John Del Carlo’s crotchety old Doctor Bartolo reached the histrionic heights. As far as I could tell, his explosive bass-baritone was the most consistent of the so-called “mini-portrayals.” The other artists – especially the buoyant Moscow-born Figaro of Rodion Pogossov, the featherweight Almaviva of Alek Shrader, and the technically proficient Rosina of New Yorker Isabel Leonard – performed over and above the call of duty, although none of them were particularly adept with the new translation, with Shrader’s uncomfortable-sounding Count leading the way.

In this climate, where every note seemed to count, bass Jordan Bisch’s Don Basilio was reduced to a cipher after his wonderfully campy “La calunnia” was expunged from the overall concept. What was the sense of that? It defeats the entire purpose of the plot to cut this aria out, and leaves innocent audience members in the dark just as they’ve settled back in their seats. I imagine most youngsters would have been startled at this implausible fellow’s later presence, wondering why Don Basilio was making such a belated entrance in Act II. “Buona sera, mio signore” is a comedic tour de force, bar none. But instead of Rossini’s carefully constructed build-up to this scene what we heard was more in line with The Sound of Music’s “Goodbye, farewell, Aufwiedersehen, good night.” And that’s all, folks! In fact, all the arias and ensembles suffered from the same cosmetic surgery: too short, too quick, with not enough development.

A Teaching Moment Lost

Teaching young children about opera and the performing arts is a noble and well-intentioned cause. I should know: as the product of a New York public-school education, I can firmly attest to the fact that the thought-process behind these maneuvers was to expose as many youngsters as possible to the wonders of music, art and theater.

To the best of my recollection, the works I saw as a child were note complete, or as complete as they were allowed to be, given the time constraints placed on our school’s schedule. Still, “dumbing” opera down for modern-day audiences and their offspring is not the way to do it. Okay, I concede that children can turn fidgety to the point of irritation, as boredom quickly sets in. Yet they’re smarter and infinitely more perceptive than adults often take them for. So let’s give our little people a chance, shall we, by playing these exceptional pieces as they were intended – without hacking the very life out of them, if you please!

In Julie Taymor’s Met Opera production of The Magic Flute for kids, the self-same Professor McClatchy kept the richness and substance of Mozart’s score virtually intact. In that successful English-language adaptation what was trimmed away were the Overture and the lengthy dialogue passages, which are generally cut back anyway, even in the original German. But by slimming The Barber of Seville down to Pee Wee Herman’s size, we’re giving Figaro his own haircut – even at discount prices, this is too close a shave for comfort. I couldn’t help feeling that we, the radio audience, were being short-changed along with the paying public. If I were the father of a school-age child, I’d have demanded my money back (or half of it, at any rate).

My only hope is that this purported Barber was presented with clearly legible supertitles – the better to discern the non-discernible plot, my dear. As for the rest of the radio audience, we’re hopelessly lost in translation. Ω

Copyright © 2012 by Josmar F. Lopes