Working at a feverish pitch, Gioachino Rossini, maestro of thrills, lacked the luxury of leisurely inspiration, composing an average of two operas per year for an astonishingly prolific nineteen years, often borrowing from himself with shameless abandon.

The Barber of Seville (1816), his penultimate opera buffa, allegedly written in three weeks, featured several distinct principal arias set to music recycled from earlier works — the lustrous soprano air, Una voce poco fa among them, brazenly commandeered from Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815) — a feat only slightly surpassed in audacity by his reuse of an entire overture wholly appropriated from Aureliano in Palmira (1813) and duly appended to Barbiere.

Even given the highly fluid state of attribution and acclaim currently in force throughout the Continent in his day, Rossini’s penchant for musical reprocessing, albeit his own, was notoriously blatant.

Audiences were utterly unfazed.

A virtual living legend by the time of his abrupt early retirement at the age of 37, the much adored champion of bel canto — and subsequent full-time boulevardier — ruled supreme, filling the great, glittering opera houses of the day from Venice to Paris with boundlessly appreciative crowds.

Summoning essentially sold-out houses for the entirety of its eight-show run, the Canadian Opera Company opened its latest Barber of Seville — the company’s current iteration first presented in 2015, last revived in 2020 — to hugely enthusiastic applause late last week, an undeniably conspicuous audience favourite tumultuously directed by Catalonia-based Joan Font.

Founding director of Barcelona’s renowned carnivalesque street theatre company, Els Comediants, Font leans heavily into the physically boisterous and flamboyant here, employing no end of acrobatic hijinks and mime, the latter reflective of puppetry or clowning, splashing the sprawling Four Seasons Centre stage with unapologetically rendered cartoonish scena. The effect is nothing short of hyperinflated — breathless, rambunctious, intense — a not inappropriate treatment for what is essentially an updated 18th century scenario cloaked in classic commedia dell’arte subtext.

Rosina, rich, attractive young ward of Dr. Bartolo (domineering Pantalone commedia character) is held under lock and key until she vows to marry him and surrender her dowry. Enter lovestruck Count Almaviva (second Innamorati) aided by barber and nimble fixer Figaro (clever Arlecchino) who, despite the presence of Rosina’s insufferably affected music teacher, Don Basilio (arrogant Il Dottore) and her busybody governess (gossipy La Ruffiana), somehow manages to engineer a happy ending.

The synergy, Font’s directorial style supported by historical architecture, is palpable here if a touch theatrically strained. A number of recurring issues cloud the dramatic landscape.

Extended pantomime sequences often prove puzzling, less added scenic animation, more unnecessary sources of distraction.

A young servant is meticulously outfitted in elegant finery by a troupe of fussy attendants only to strip their hapless charge to his underwear once dressed by means of firm tugs on wired breakaway seams.

A pretty maid, threatened by an overly amorous elderly suitor or, equally plausible, simply glimpsed in the process of being clumsily wooed, is seemingly rescued by a strapping young hero who promptly leads her to bed.

Set design by Joan Guillén is similarly opaque, pivoting from pronounced Picasso-esque whimsy to the sunless reality of Bartolo’s dreary Seville townhouse interior where we are left, unceremoniously abandoned for over two hours, without the slightest attempt on the director’s part to match story to physical focus. Rosina’s liberators are revealed entering through a second floor window. Suddenly a ladder appears indoors. Confusion reigns. The staging could not be clumsier.

But perhaps all this is splitting Barber-ly hairs. The vast majority of problems related to occasionally heedless direction and/or perplexing presentation are, by and large, brushed aside by a succession of sleek, stylish performances.

Colorado native, baritone Luke Sutliff, sings a vibrant, powerfully expansive Figaro, his forceful dynamic tone belying a remarkable flexibility, impressively forte at the upper end of his high note friendly range, appealingly sotto voce in more conspiratorial moments on stage. Iconic, always highly anticipated, Rossini’s galloping Largo al factotum is delivered with a more than prescribed amount of exuberant patter dispatched at breakneck speed.

Appearing as Rosina, Omani-born Canadian mezzo-soprano Deepa Johnny delights. Gifted with an extraordinarily translucent instrument, bright and shining from top to bottom, Johnny displays a substantial depth of singer actorly command. A touch constrained by a fleeting hint of opening night nerves, her rather more intimate, untypically luxurious rendition of the composer’s aforementioned showpiece, Una voce poco fa, nevertheless enchanted, joining Sutliff later in Act I for a frisky shared performance of Rosina/Figaro’s playful duet, Dunque io son (“Then it is I”).

Italian tenor Dave Monaco sings the demanding role of Count Almaviva his voice arguably less Rossinian in timbre than might be expected, more muted squillo than bell-like, requiring a certain degree of aural reset on the part of Barber devotees. Monaco’s rendering of Almaviva’s silvery moonlit serenade, Ecco ridente in cielo (“Lo, in the smiling sky”), sung mere moments after curtain rise, quickly sets the tone for frequent future vocal turns, a confidant, uninhibited singer possessed of plucky dramatic instincts. The Count’s Act II return disguised as Don Alfonso, mad piano accompanist to Rosina in the opera’s celebrated singing lesson, in Monaco’s spirited hands, results in a positively uproarious moment of utterly madcap burlesque.

Baritone Renato Girolami contributes a fine, tirelessly stentorian performance, singing, the irascible, endlessly loathsome Don Bartolo with great grumbly gusto. Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni appears as Don Basilio, singing teacher ridicolo, his preposterously pompous lecture on the evils of slander, La calunnia è un venticello (“Slander is a little breeze”) a highlight of the evening. Mezzo Ariana Maubach sings an eternally grumpy Berta, vocally inhabiting her character with a fine sense of comedic authenticity.

The men of the Canadian Opera Company Chorus populate a bumbling, wickedly lampooned, troupe of purple-plumed guardia, cut-out carbines at the ready, voices raised in laughable warning — Zitto, tu! Oh, non più! (“Silence, all! That’s enough!”). Harmony irresistibly entangled in the tripping, syncopated patter of Rossini’s rollicking sextet, choristers miraculously maintain their hold on Barber’s gloriously chaotic Act I Finale. Wonderful.

Visiting maestra Daniela Candillari leads the Canadian Opera Company Orchestra. Sounding even mightier and more muscular than usual if possible, tempi crackling, instrumental colours ablaze, players stoke the raging storm of ferocious crescendi tempered with gentler, more tranquil interludes that is Rossini’s limitless score.

Originating as pre-Revolutionary social critique penned by playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais in 1778, part one of a trilogy of related comedies, The Barber of Seville, 19th century libretto by Cesare Sterbini, tirelessly rails against all manner of societal ills — privileged elites, naked monetary greed, the oppression of women.

Sharp operatic tongues firmly planted in satirical cheeks, director Font and company attack. A riotous, rowdy Barber, all but impossible not to watch.