{"id":46374,"date":"2026-06-26T13:35:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:35:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/46374\/"},"modified":"2026-06-26T13:35:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T13:35:06","slug":"grange-parks-barber-of-seville-needs-to-cut-the-cliches-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/46374\/","title":{"rendered":"Grange Park\u2019s Barber of Seville needs to cut the clich\u00e9s"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On the hottest day of the year so far, conditions were sweltering even in the shady Theatre in the Woods that <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/opera\/what-to-see\/rheingold-grange-park-opera-review\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Grange Park Opera<\/a> has created in <a class=\"ck-custom-link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telegraph.co.uk\/opera\/what-to-see\/don-carlo-grange-park-opera-review\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">West Horsley, Surrey<\/a>. So one had to applaud the players and singers, conducted by Gianluca Marcian\u00f2 (in a T-shirt), for giving their best in this new production of Rossini\u2019s comic masterpiece of 1816. Based on Beaumarchais\u2019s 1775 play, the story of Count Almaviva\u2019s romantic manoeuvrings as he courts Rosina is told in supremely elegant and witty music, which demands a crisp, light touch to project its sharp social commentary.<\/p>\n<p>Francis O\u2019Connor\u2019s ingeniously decorated ironwork sets of doors and staircases, which moved deftly around the stage with a suggestion of orange trees beyond, placed us very definitely in Seville. As soon as we saw and heard James Newby\u2019s barber Figaro booming his first aria from the shower, we knew he was in charge of the local scene. Nico Darmanin\u2019s tightly focussed Count Almaviva (disguised as Lindoro) was no match for him, even if he played his own guitar on stage in his serenade scene. Rosina, the sharp-tongued ward of Don Bartolo (the crisply authoritarian Simon Bailey), was brought to pouting life by Ginger Costa-Jackson, with an enviable range of bright coloratura, though she revealed an over-steely edge as the music raced into the higher regions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On the hottest day of the year so far, conditions were sweltering even in the shady Theatre in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":46375,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[20,20866,15054,7718,109,20865],"class_list":["post-46374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-seville","tag-culture","tag-culture-editors-choice","tag-opera","tag-review","tag-seville","tag-surrey"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46374"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46374\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46375"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/spain\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}