Scottish Opera – The Marriage of Figaro

1 Nov 2010 in Aberdeen City & Shire, General, Highland, Music, Showcase

Theatre Royal, Glasgow,  29 October 2010, and touring

ALL AROUND was felt the buzz of anticipation! After the popular triumph of Rossini’s The Barber of Seville in 2007 under the direction of Sir Thomas Allen and his team, there was great excitement as a packed Theatre Royal waited to see Sir Thomas’s touch on the opera based on the second play in the Beaumarchais trilogy, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.

Arguably, this is the most universally loved of all operas and the general message is “Mess with it at your peril!” – a message that Sir Thomas had taken to heart, for this is a production very much set in its time, with a few tweaks that add dramatic detail to a plot with more twists than a stick of barley sugar.

Roderick Williams and Kate Valentine in Scottish Opera's The Marriage of Figaro

Roderick Williams and Kate Valentine as the Count and Countess Almaviva in Scottish Opera's The Marriage of Figaro. Photo - Mark Hamilton

Music Director Francesco Corti was half way through the overture before the curtain rose to reveal the villagers taking in the harvest, offering a foretaste of how Allen handles the garden scene of Act Four and giving us a first glimpse of the romantic antics of Cherubino the pageboy. It is a nice touch to make the overture both dramatically visual as well as musical.

As with the Barber three years ago, Simon Higlett’s designs were creative with delightful colours, and were lit to perfection by Mark Jonathan. If there was one slight anomaly, it was that the huge floor to ceiling windows would be better suited to a stately home in France or central Europe rather than the heat of southern Spain.

But that point cannot be made about the set for the down-at-heel room that Count Almaviva has allocated to Figaro and his bride, Susanna. For there are no windows – just ready access to the rooms of the Count and the Countess should their personal servants be required at any time. It is a perfect removal set up, ideal for the farcical scene that occurs as Susanna has to hide first Cherubino then the Count under the dust sheets.

By the end of the act we have met nearly all the characters. The outstanding Dutch baritone, Thomas Oliemans, returns as Figaro, by this time more mature and less fly-by-night than he was three years ago. His bride, Susanna is beautifully portrayed by former Scottish Opera Emerging Artist Nadine Livingstone.

The acclaimed Mozartian Roderick Williams plays Count Almaviva with a rainbow of emotions from lust to anger, from arrogance to probably short-lived contrition. Making her Scottish Opera debut in the trouser role of Cherubino is the German mezzo Ulrike Mayer, disturbingly realistic as a young boy.

Invernessian Harry Nicoll is deliciously camp as both Don Basilio and Don Curzio, while Leah-Marian Jones and Francesco Facini play Marcellina and Doctor Bartolo, old protagonists with a secret to reveal. Coming later are Martin Lamb as Susanna’s uncle Antonio, the inebriate gardener, and his daughter Barberina, ready to be conquered by Cherubino, sung by another Scottish Opera Emerging Artist, Miranda Sinani.

But one of the most challenging moments in all opera is carried off exquisitely by Inverness-born Kate Valentine as Countess Almaviva. She has to sit out the whole of the first act and then come on cold at the opening of Act Two, set in her rooms, with the haunting and moving aria “Porgi amor”. She gets precisely the right balance of sadness and pathos as she yearns to recapture the love of Almaviva which has turned cold in his arrogance and unfaithfulness.

For this act, Higlett’s design is most elegant, with various pastel hues demarking the various areas of the Countess’s rooms, and a bathtub part-covered for the Count to examine to see if Cherubino is hiding there – another of the little details that set this production apart.

A scene in the Countess's Chamber from Marriage of Figaro

Scottish Opera's The Marriage of Figaro with Roderick Williams as the Count, Kate Valentine as the Countess, Nadine Livingston as Susanna and Thomas Oliemans as Figaro. Photo - Mark Hamilton

In the Count’s rooms, the predominant colour is a strong red, a colour of aggression, and the main feature is a display of dolls signifying his conquests in exercising his droit de seigneur. After all the twists and turns of Figaro’s parentage are resolved, eventually the Count is finessed into conducting the marriages of Figaro to Susanna and Bartolo to Marcellina, but not without being tricked into a false assignation that night in the gardens.

And so the opera goes full circle, for Allen and Higlett have changed the gardens into the cornfield first seen during the overture. Instead of bushes and bowers to hide in, the sheaves of corn provided cover and brought a quite literal meaning to the expression “a roll in the hay”!

While on the subject of literal meanings, why do we translate Le Nozze di Figaro into The Marriage of Figaro? The tale is about the wedding of Figaro and Susanna; the marriage under scrutiny is that of the Count and the Countess.

With full reason, the Glasgow audience loved this production and cheered it to the chandeliers as the ensemble cast took bow after bow after bow. Even the rain cascading in Cowcaddens was not enough to dampen the enthusiasm for a memorable evening.

Sir Thomas Allen has presented Scottish Opera with two fantastic operas; two thirds of Pierre Augustin de Beaumarchais’ Figaro Trilogy in operatic form. Rossini and Sterbini, and Mozart and Da Ponte have done their bit.

The final part, La Mère Coupable, was known in its time as the other Tartuffe, Molière’s classic satirical comedy, It has been turned into an opera by Darius Milhaud, with libretto by his wife Madeleine, and was performed in Geneva in 1966. Just a thought, or maybe there is a reason why it has not entered the repertoire.

The Marriage of Figaro is at Eden Court Theatre, Inverness, on 4 & 6 November, and His Majesty’s Theatre, Aberdeen, on 11 & 13 November.

© James Munro, 2010

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