Not content with the demands of the role as it is often heard, Swanson reinstated the Count’s blockbuster Act II aria “Cessa di più resistere,” cut from most productions after the premiere.

Young tenor Jack Swanson made a dashing, charming Almaviva, his dulcet tone and clear high notes crowned by astounding agility in the role’s many florid passages.

Her immaculate runs and embellishments took her into the role’s rich lower range, with not quite as many soprano high notes added, giving the role the piquant edge Rossini intended. Multiple musical elements of this production went back to Rossini’s original conception of the opera, premiered in Rome in 1816, beginning with casting the puissant mezzo-soprano Emily Fons as Rosina. A team of assistant barbers with rolling chairs shadowed him, shouting out “Figaro” during the cadenza of “Largo al factotum,” after which Hopkins bested them with a rock-falsetto high note. Baritone Joshua Hopkins was in splendid voice as Figaro, reeling off blistering stretches of wordy patter and full-throated high notes. The chestnuts this summer, heard in succession on Monday and Tuesday evening, are Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville and Georges Bizet’s Carmen.įrom top to bottom, the cast assembled for this Barber of Seville is extraordinary. The programming formula at Santa Fe Opera generally includes two perennial opera favorites that are an easy sell to large audiences. Bartolo (Kevin Burdette), Almaviva (Jack Swanson), Berta (Murrella Parton), and Figaro (Joshua Hopkins) as Basilio (Nicholas Newton) looks on in Santa Fe Opera’s production of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville.

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