The Barber in Benidorm: Louise Bakker's 1970s sitcom take on Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia with a terrific cast at Longborough Festival Opera

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - finale of Act One - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia: Joseph Doody, Lauren Young, Benjamin Bevan, Henry Neill, director: Louise Bakker, conductor Elaine Kelly; Longborough Festival Opera
Reviewed 13 July 2025

It might be described as 'the British Bayreuth' but Longborough's stylishly engaging 1970s take on Rossini's comic masterpiece radiated both musical style and sheer enjoyment

This year's Longborough Festival Opera season does not feature any of the works by Wagner for which it has become known, though in Avner Dorman's Wahnfried: The Birth of the Wagner Cult and Debussy's Pelleas et Melisande, Wagner and his ideas were never far away. In completed contrast, the third opera being presented was far lighter, Rossini's Il barbiere di Siviglia.

We were lucky enough to catch the final performance, on Sunday 13 July 2025. Directed by Louise Bakker, designed by Max Johns and Anisha Fields, and conducted by Elaine Kelly, the production featured Henry Neill as Figaro, Joseph Doody as Count Almaviva, Lauren Young as Rosina, Benjamin Bevan as Dr Bartolo, Shafali Jalota as Berta and Kieran Rayner as Fiorello. The staff for the production also featured a couple of other notable names as the tenor Alessandro Fisher was assistant director and language coach, whilst David Eaton (music director of Charles Court Opera) was assistant conductor, chorus master and responsible for the continuo.

Max Johns imaginative set provided all the wherewithal for the opera's farcical elements and did service both for the indoor and outdoor scenes. During the overture, we opened on a Spanish square in a tourist destination in the 1970s, judging from the costumes. Itinerant vendors were setting up their wares, and Henry Neill's Figaro was established as being something of a wide boy and completely itinerant, without any fixed workplace. Feeling the need to fill the whole overture, Bakker rather allowed this joke to play for too long, but it provided valuable background for the comedy to come.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Storm scene: Lauren Young & chorus - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

The slightly over-done mannerism and over-active action partook of the visual language of sitcom and there was a feeling that Bakker and Johns had reset the opera in Benidorm. Whilst Bakker certainly endeavoured to fill the stage with colour and movement, with a fondness for over emphasis, there was little of the extreme stylisation that directors sometimes resort to when faced with Rossini's large-scale structures. The recitative rattled along nicely, with the cast managing to find a vocal and visual language that gelled. The opera was sung in Italian, nice and clear from my fourth row seats, with Nick Fowler's surtitles giving us a rather casual, demotic take on Sterbini's original.

The 1970s setting (with some of the chorus looking like refugees from a bad Village People tribute act) meant that the opera's theme was refocused on the issue between liberation and tradition. Lauren Young's feisty Rosina pushed boundaries in terms of dress and action, wanting to break free from her controlling guarding. It helped that Young's rich, wide-ranging mezzo-soprano was fully up to this interpretation. Her opening aria conveyed that underneath the carefully crafted demure exterior there did indeed lurk a viper, and as the opera progressed she through herself into the action physically and musically. She gave a very physical performance and one that unashamedly broke the fourth wall as she gained our sympathies and outwitted her guardian. Unlike the Rosina in Beaumarchais' original plays, this heroine would run rings around Almaviva once they were married! Young was Tisbe in English Touring Opera's 2023 production of Rossini's Cinderella [see my review], but on this showing I would love to see her in the title role.

The hero in that ETO Cinderella was Joseph Doody and he has clearly grown into Rossini's primo uomo roles. Here he produced high-wire coloratura in spades. This creates something of a dichotomy in the opera, one that we can squarely lay at Rossini's door. Musically, the role has all the seriousness of the composer's high-lying tenor parts in his opera seria, but dramatically this Count is an idiot. Doody and Bakker leaned into this, so Count Almaviva was definitely Tim 'nice but dim', all manner and no sense. Doody really went with this, creating a silly ass who, nonetheless has the right manners, for which read an ability to spin an elegant and imposingly elaborate line. It was this musicality that held us and made us root for the Count. We didn't get his final aria, alas, as I would have loved to hear Doody's combination of heroic timbre and virtuosity in this pre-echo of La Cenerentola, but given the extreme heat in the auditorium it was perhaps a sensible decision.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Act Two, scene Two: Lauren Young, Joseph Doody, Henry Neill - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

As with Donizetti's comedies, there is a nasty streak in both Rossini's Il barbiere di Sivigla and La cenerentola. Here, Benjamin Bevan's Dr Bartolo was definitely a nasty piece of work, but Bevan and Bakker made him so self-regarding and emotionally immature that he was completely unaware of the effect he had. Bevan captured this wonderfully with the combination of his body language and attitude along with an outfit of shorts, long-socks and old-man sandals that was almost laugh-out-loud funny. It helped that Bevan could sing Bartolo's arias in a stylish and vivid manner, when there was bluster it was deliberate, which meant there was so much to enjoy in his performance. He was also a gifted physical performer, Bevan's reactions to the events going on around him were priceless.

Musically, Figaro is a bit of a strange role in that his opening aria has entered the canon yet for the rest of the opera the character takes second place. Except that he is an essential part of the scheming. Here, Henry Neill's ebullient, self-possessed Figaro kept our attention in spades. There was a sense of endless energy to Neill's performance. Having established his chancer character in the overture, his famous aria was essentially selling his service to us, the audience (the rest of the characters on stage having fled on the first note of his aria). Throughout the opera, this Figaro never once flagged in his extreme self-belief. The energy that Neill put into the performance, and the energy we drew out were amazing. It helped that he sang with a similar sense of joy.

The production made Trevor Eliot Bowes something of a chancer too. In the overture we saw him letting out rooms, and at the end of Act One he was clearly making free with Dr Bartolo's bathroom facilities (which seemed simply to be an excuse for a delightfully ludicrous costume). Bowes' lent an engaging sense of fun to the character, and his calumny aria was enlivened by some vivid body language. Shafali Jalota was the long-suffering cleaner who made her aria really shine. Kieran Rayner had the thankless role of Fiorello, but he performed winningly. Rayner was also covering Figaro, so hopefully he will get an upgrade soon.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Act Two, scene One: Joseph Doody, Henry Neill, Benjamin Bevan, Lauren Young Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

The hard-working chorus of 12 were each presenting an individual character. Whilst there were police and military in their ranks there were lots of other trades too and when the police erupted in at the end of Act One it was more like the neighbourhood watch. During the scene changes in each Act, the chorus reappeared in hot pink boiler suits and proceeded to reset the stage, and then during the Storm in Act Two they and Lauren Young enacted a hilarious 'ballet' which seemed to embody Rosina's bad dreams. Jack Sandison from the chorus was the admirable officer in the Act One finale.

The set pieces were well done, and though Bakker did have a tendency to over-stuff the action it did not go too far. The ensemble at the end of Act One and the music lesson scene are both substantial musical items and any director needs to work on Rossini's scale. In the music lesson, one joke felt over done, though. When Bartolo sang his aria, Bevan launched into a reworking of the Tom Jones' hit 'Delilah', thankfully that didn't last long. [There is a long tradition of substitution in the lesson scene, Nellie Melba used to have a piano wheeled onto the stage and would accompany herself in 'Home Sweet Home']. There were a couple of moments when Bakker seemed a little too fond of her jokes, but overall this was a most engaging staging.

In the pit, Elaine Kelly and the orchestra were in prime form. After a vital and engaging account of the overture where the musical values were not overshadowed by the stage action, Kelly kept the performance pacey and vital yet never seemed to push things too far.

Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia - Kieran Rayner, Joseph Doody, Chorus - Longborough Festival Opera, 2025 (Photo: Clive Barda)

Sometimes, productions of Il barbiere di Siviglia can be so fond of their own concept or updating that the essence of the original gets lost. Here, a cast of singing actors all showed themselves to be capable of stylish Rossini yet made their enjoyment of the comedy come over. It was that sense of joy and enjoyment that we took away. Act One is very long, but here it cantered along admirably and the shorter Act Two was engaging despite the heat. Longborough is an ideal sized theatre in which to hear this music and we should be glad that their rest from Wagner included music from a composer who might seem his antithesis.

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