Il barbiere di Siviglia by Gioachino Rossini returns to the Cavea del Teatro, the evocative open-air theater located right on the roof of the Maggio. The opera is conducted by the young maestro Riccardo Bisatti, with the now “traditional” staging by Damiano Michieletto. Twenty-one years after its first production, which took place in July 2005 at the Roman Theatre of Fiesole - and thus originally conceived and designed for an open space, just like the Cavea del Maggio - it reaches its eleventh staging within the Theater’s seasons. Despite its age, it retains intact all the freshness, originality, and modernity that have made it over time an “evergreen” production, highly appreciated by the Maggio. Michieletto’s production features an almost total absence of real sets and focuses all attention on comic gags and carefully crafted gestures. It begins as a train journey, announced over a loudspeaker - an cheerful way of traveling “through” Rossini’s opera, evoking places and situations through imagination. Evocative and eccentric costumes and bright colors turn the characters into caricatures, almost as if they were figures from commedia dell’arte: Don Basilio is green, with long, greasy hair and a hooked nose, entirely green with envy like a snake (or rather, a basilisk); Figaro has hair that suggests fox-like ears and a mustache, while Don Bartolo, dressed all in white, resembles a pot-bellied bulldog who jealously watches Rosina, dressed in red like her lover Lindoro.

Staging by Maggio Musicale Fiorentino