St George’s Hall, Bradford; St Paul’s Hall, Huddersfield
Ian McMillan’s Rossini in ‘proper Yorkshire’ flummoxes and charms, while Huddersfield clings on at the cliff edge of experiment
“Hod on theer!/ What’s all this fuddle/ Would yore mind tellin?/ What’s all this shartin/ Rawpin and screamin?” This is Rossini refracted through Yorkshire dialect via the poet and broadcaster Ian McMillan. His skilful adaptation of The Barber of Seville, written for Bradford as part of a new opera festival, was premiered there in the Victorian splendour of a packed St George’s Hall. The audience’s chuckles began during the overture when a dozen men in flat caps – the chorus, as yet silent – soft-shoed through the auditorium, poring over a mock map of Bradford held upside down. We all need to be able to find the West Yorkshire town: in 2025 it becomes UK city of culture.
Whether this amiable enterprise was a prelude is hard to say. Sold as “Eyup! Rossini’s best loved comic opera put into proper Yorkshire”, it contains the seeds of something interesting, but was in many respects an enigma. How could a one-off semi-staging launch a festival that, some shopping centre pop-ups aside, had no other event? Was it ad hoc professional but not quite sharp enough? Or pro-am, in which case standards were respectable? Even Maria Callas – subject of an evening of documentaries on BBC Four last week marking her centenary – used to say that the first night is only the start of getting to know a work. This Barber’s first night was also the last, which is a pity. Callas also, provocatively, said some operas go on too long and should be cut. The Barber of Seville is indeed long and, in the spirit of McMillan’s adaptation, a trim might have been a good idea.
