Coming up in 2010/11: BARBER OF SEVILLE

Seattle Opera will pivot from bel canto tragedy to bel canto comedy in January of next year, for Rossini's beloved Barber of Seville. Peter Kazaras, whose Falstaff had audiences interrupting the music with screams of delight, laughter and applause last March, directs two breath-taking bel canto casts for our nine performances. Bel canto operas are all about the performers--in comedies, their voices PLUS their senses of humor--and both groups here are sure to dazzle.

If you come on a Wednesday or a Saturday night, you'll hear Lawrence Brownlee as Almaviva and Australian baritone José Carbó making his US Debut as Figaro. Here are the two of them, performing the duet from Barber's Act One in Madrid:


Brownlee, most recently seen at Seattle Opera as Arturo in I puritani(left), was with Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program for two seasons. His second year, he performed Ramiro in La cenerentola in Bellevue's Meydenbauer Theatre, in a cast that featured the Clorinda of Sarah Coburn. (Yes, you heard them both in Bellevue first, opera lovers of Seattle!) Coburn will play Rosina to Brownlee's Almaviva at Seattle Opera next January.

Here she is in her Seattle Opera mainstage debut, as Adele in Die Fledermaus in 2006:


With Sarah Coburn in that picture above are Dana Johnson, as Ida, and Patrick Carfizzi, who played Prison Warden Frank. In next season's Barber of Seville, Carfizzi will be a jailor of a different kind for Sarah Coburn--her tyrannical guardian, Dr. Bartolo.

Carfizzi plays Bartolo with both Barber of Seville casts next winter in Seattle. But audiences who come on a Friday or Sunday will be treated to the Rosina of Kate Lindsey, who dazzled in her recent Seattle Opera debut as Hagen's Amelia:



Her Figaro is David Adam Moore, most recently seen at Seattle Opera as Zurga in The Pearl Fishers:


Moore is also a graduate of Seattle Opera's Young Artists Program; he sang Figaro's Count ('99) and Don Giovanni ('00) in Bellevue's Meydenbauer Theatre. But I'll always remember his gorgeous voice coming from offstage as he slowly made his entrance as Jake Wallace, the camp minstrel, in La fanciulla del West '04.

Making his Seattle Opera debut as Almaviva to Kate Lindsey and David Adam Moore is the exciting young American tenor Nicholas Phan, a graduate of Houston Grand Opera's Studio. You can hear samples of his singing if you click "Audio" on his WEBSITE; here's a photo of Phan as Lucano in L.A. Opera's Coronation of Poppea:



Photo credits: Rozarii Lynch (Brownlee, Coburn/Carfizzi, Lindsey, Moore), Robert Millard (Phan)

All these singers have busy schedules between now and next December, when they come to Seattle to begin rehearsing Barber: Brownlee sings Almaviva at La Scala, Coburn is Gilda in Wales, Moore just came back from singing Escamillo at a castle in Ireland, Lindsey is learning two different versions of Nicklausse in Tales of Hoffmann (one for Santa Fe, one for the Met), Carfizzi is heading to Glimmerglass, and Phan is Candide in Ravinia. Best wishes to them all!