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WA Opera back to 100pc capacity with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville & James Clayton in title role Figaro

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David CusworthThe West Australian
James Clayton plays Figaro and Michael Petruccelli as Count Almaviva in WAO’s The Barber of Seville.
Camera IconJames Clayton plays Figaro and Michael Petruccelli as Count Almaviva in WAO’s The Barber of Seville. Credit: James Rogers

West Australian Opera returns to a full house on Saturday with Rossini’s The Barber of Seville, the first big production at His Majesty’s Theatre with 100 per cent capacity audience since COVID curbs came in.

WA baritone James Clayton, who plays the title role Figaro, also played the lead in Macbeth, in 2019 – one of a series of bad guys roles he took before the lockdown, and he’s happy to break out.

“I was saying to one of my colleagues the other day that when you sing Rossini, it’s one of the few composers where your fun levels match your exhaustion levels,” he says. “It’s a lot of fun, a fun set, fun costumes.

“I’ve been doing a lot of ‘real’ opera lately, depicting someone being bad, or depicting someone in a crisis, and it’s all to be plausible and it’s got to be believable, whereas this is an opportunity to ham it up a bit and have fun.”

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His last role at The Maj was Don Alfonso, in Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte late last year: a more conflicted, scheming character.

James Clayton plays Figaro in WAO’s The Barber of Seville.
Camera IconJames Clayton plays Figaro in WAO’s The Barber of Seville. Credit: James Rogers

“Vocally (Figaro) is very different, it’s a lot higher, there’s a lot of black on page, like somebody’s swatted a lot of flies, there are so many notes,” he laughs.

“But also Don Alfonso’s a more senior character, looked up to by the two boys in Cosi, whereas Figaro is a more vital, younger character. The aria, Largo al factotum, is saying he’s the jack of all trades. He’s got his finger in every single pie and he’s got his ear to single wall and every door, and he knows what’s going on.”

The format is an opera buffa, like Cosi, where quick-witted servants get the better of the bosses.

“One of the lines, the Count says, ‘You can help me do this?’ and I say, ‘Of course, I’m the barber, and I’m also a veterinarian, and I’m whatever you need me to be, that’s what I’ll be’,” Clayton says.

“In the aria he says, ‘Figaro qua, Figaro là, Figaro su, figaro giù’, ‘I’m left, I’m right, I’m up, I’m down, I’m everywhere’.”

He will return to Figaro later this year for Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, based on the second of a trilogy of plays by French dramatist Beaumarchais, whose revolutionary connections prompt suggestions that Figaro, too, is subversive.

“It’s not so obvious as it is in Marriage of Figaro,” Clayton says.

“It’s earlier in the piece so he teams up with the Count and tries to help him hook up with Rosina, and ends up doing that.

“Then when we come to Marriage of Figaro he’s a bit more jaded, he’s a bit more bitter, because he thinks that the Count is trying to sleep with Susanna, he’s trying to take first rights and sleep with her on the first night of the wedding. Definitely Figaro is subversive then, but I would say in The Barber of Seville, Figaro is a lot more bright and bushy tailed.

James Clayton plays Figaro and Michael Petruccelli as Count Almaviva in WAO’s The Barber of Seville.
Camera IconJames Clayton plays Figaro and Michael Petruccelli as Count Almaviva in WAO’s The Barber of Seville. Credit: James Rogers

“The Count and he are good friends so long as the Count provides him with plenty of coin.”

The production is “a visual extravaganza”, he says, full of colour and action.

“Whenever I do this, the memory that comes up for and stays with me is the Bugs Bunny cartoon,” Clayton says, referring to a Looney Tunes episode where Bugs and Elmer Fudd chase each other around a barber shop to Rossini’s score.

“Literally I feel like I’m part of a cartoon on stage, but in the best possible way. Not cartoon as in cartoonish, like it’s grotesque or it doesn’t fit, but we are larger than life.

“There’s a scene where the chorus come on. There all dressed in red and it just pops like you wouldn’t believe.

“The set, the lighting design is equal to that as well. The set is a mish-mash of doors all over the place. It all fits around that aria, Figaro is up, he’s down, he’s left, he’s right.”

Clayton had planned 2020 as his year to go international, after starring roles with Freeze Frame and WA Opera, as well as acclaimed concert performances.

He made it to the UK and Germany, then COVID struck.

“At some point I will go again, but obviously with international travel the way it is now I’m just incredibly grateful that I have the company here that’s using me and the companies that are in Australia, that I’d actually carved out a rep in Australia. It’s sort of a God send,” he says.

“The tenor playing (Count) Almaviva in this production (Michael Petruccelli), I saw his eyes light up when we went on stage for the first time, and I was like, ‘Ah, you know, that’s right, there’s a few people that haven’t been back on stage since this happened, so it’s had a massive impact on some people’.

“Some people get really excited and some people get really, really nervous, because it really is a skill that if you don’t use it you lose it.”

It has been a big reset for the Perth Modern and WAAPA-trained artist who started as a French horn player before taking to opera in the mid-noughties.

“Our plans have changed completely, we’ve actually moved down south and we’ve bought a block and we’re looking to build on that in Bridgetown, and I’m very happy just to be in WA now,” he says.

“But look that might change, ‘COVID permitting’; that’s what they say in Britain now.”

Europe’s loss is WA Opera’s gain, as Clayton will appear across the season, in both Figaro works, as well as Cavalliera Rusticana and I Pagliacci, and Elijah this year.

The Barber of Seville is on April 17, 20, 22 and 24.

https://www.waopera.asn.au/shows/events/the-barber-of-seville/

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