Complete sets of Il barbiere di Siviglia have been recorded for local consumption in Russia, France and Germany, but there has never previously been an English-language recording. There wasn't even a highlights disc from the old Sadler's Wells company in the days when they were specializing in mid-price highlights discs of popular operas and operettas by composers like Bizet, Puccini, Smetana, Verdi, Lehar, Offenbach and Johann Strauss.
In reviving the idea, Chandos are opting for complete recordings of a not dissimilar repertory; Bizet, Mozart and Puccini feature in their future plans. But why this sudden revival of interest in opera – on record – in English? It seems that market research, that expensive toy of the executive classes, has revealed that the already expanding market for opera would expand further and faster if opera were to be made ''more comprehensible and entertaining''.
What balderdash this all is. If your tiro opera lover wants to be entertained in the more usual sense of the term, it is simply a matter of pointing the said party in the direction of Orpheus in the Underworld (in English, if you must) and advising him (or her) to steer clear of Parsifal for a while. As for the word 'comprehensible', whenever was comprehensibility a sine qua non of opera or a primary cause of anyone's lifelong addiction to it? Did the record industries in Great Britain and the United States grow fat on the huge sales of Caruso records (or Pavarotti's) because the great man agreed to sing everything in English? By no means.
I think we all know that some operas translate better than others; that some operas cry out for translation, where others stoutly resist it. In this respect, Rossini's Il barbiere is a curate's egg of a piece that almost calls out for the kind of macaronic treatment David Pountney decided on for this year's Garsington Festival production of Haydn's La fedelta premiata. (Recits in English, arias in Italian; and howls of critical outrage all round.) Rossini's secco recitatives which carry what is left of the burden of Beaumarchais's drama come up splendidly – wonderfully 'comprehensibly' – in this new Chandos recording. The translation by Amanda and Anthony Holden helps, though it must be said that the cast is theatrically pretty streetwise too. Only your absolute novice – sadly, the kind of person the management consultants probably have in mind – will be put off by the way some singers never quite forget all those hours with the voice coach, even when uttering simple speech. (''Eet is time'' rather than ''It is time''.)
At the other end of the scale from the recitatives are the lyric arias: Almaviva's cavatina, for instance. Bruce Ford sings it beautifully, but he would sing even more beautifully, and probably win more converts to opera, if he sang it in Italian. Della Jones, one of the great Rosinas of her generation, can dispatch ''Una voce poco fa'' as well in English as in Italian, but the way she sings the two words ''Buona sera'' at the start of the Act 2 Quintet makes me long to hear her Rosina in Italian. (A vain hope, since it has taken nearly 20 years to get this performance on record.) Fast patters songs cause more problems than they solve when they are translated: Figaro's ''Largo al factotum'' or Dr Bartolo's big solo. Here one really does need the mobility of the original Italian text and its symbiotic relationship with Rossini's music. On the other hand, where Rossini so expertly mixes song and declamatory narrative – something Verdi greatly admired in this score – we can all be happy. Almaviva's big Act 1 duet with Figaro is superbly performed here by Bruce Ford and Alan Opie, and Basilio's ''Calumny'' aria (down a tone in C) is wonderfully well expounded by Peter Rose.
Aside from the language question, what kind of Barber is this? As a production it is big-boned, robust and not very subtle. Gabriele Bellini has some fine wind players at his disposal, but the orchestral playing is no more than adequate. Ideally, Rossini needs a special kind of string playing: racy, brilliant, sly, even at times downright chilly. Bellini is either innocent of this or incapable of realizing it with the ENO orchestra. The recording is also on the big side, lacking intimacy, and with few production effects. These can be irksome, but if you are prepared to use the skills of an expert radio drama producer you can come up with some wonderfully funny detailing, as Naxos prove on their sensationally well-produced three-disc super-budget set. Certainly, Chandos will have to give more thought to this kind of thing, and to the repertory they are planning to work in, if this well-intentioned series is to fire the interest of the wider community of collectors they have in mind.'