Credits

Notes on the Production

WRITTEN BY Julia Brown Simmons

PHOTOS BY Kelly & Massa

Figaro (Jonathan Beyer) makes his entrance with the famous aria “Largo al factotum” in the 2014 Opera Philadelphia production. “I don’t want to imitate life in movies; I want to represent it. And in that representation, you use the colors you feel, and sometimes they are fake colors.” — Pedro Almodóvar

Film director and screenwriter Almodóvar may raise more questions than he answers: how does one “feel” colors, and what distinguishes a “fake” color from a real one? Yet, his idea—that imitating life is somehow different from representing life, and representing life sometimes requires the unreal or “fake”—is the essence of Rossini’s comic operas. Rossini’s The Barber of Seville represents the realities of life—love, desire, materialism— through a story that uses elements of the unreal— absurdity, farce, randomness. Rossini’s “fake colors” are crucial in this particular Atlanta Opera production, which draws heavily on Almodóvar’s aesthetic.

Gioachino Rossini, born in Pesaro, Italy and raised by a singer and a trumpeter, premiered his first opera in 1810 at age 18. He saw immediate success with this one-act