One delectable assortment

[muckefuck]

So if you want to know where the inspiration for the garish pastels in the costumes of Barbara Gaines' production came from, look no further than here:


I have one of my seat partners, a music prof at UofC, to thank for this observation. He also remarked that this was "the Mozart who gives rise to Rossini, not the Mozart who rise birth to Wagner". That is, the staging was reaching back into the commedia dell'arte tradition of physical comedy rather than looking forward to the 19th-century of grand opera. Which is a fine thing to do, but to pull it off (as your man also pointed out) you need a cast of fine comedians as well as fine singers. And--with the prominent exception of Luca Pisaroni as the Count--that's something we didn't have.

This was most noticeable with the character whose name is in the title, Figaro. Adam Plachetka's voice a bit small for the vast interior of the Lyric, leading him to get drowned out by the orchestra a couple of times. He's got the size to bumble about, but he needed to work on timing. Everybody did, which leads one to hope that the final performance will be much more assured than this, only the second in the run. From the sound of it, guest conductor Henrik Nánási will need that much time to get a handle on the orchestra, which wasn't as together as it should've been. Add in some turgid sections and you've got yourself quite a draggy first act.

But things picked up noticeably in the second, thanks in no small part to Pisaroni. Rachel Frenkel acquitted herself nicely with "Voi che sapete", but whether through her stiffness or poor direction, that number didn't come off nearly as well as it could've. (As Cherubino sings, the Countess keeps trying to distract him with playful caresses and teasing gestures. But he ignores her singlemindedly--despite the fact that only minutes before he was literally throwing himself around with distress at not being able to see her!) Gaines' decision to set all of the action on the tremendous bed of the lady of the manor works very well in this scene, but makes less sense later when a gardener(!) marches in and stomps all over it, followed by all and sundry.



I must say, the production grew on me. At first, the huge blonde wood-textured swoop making up the centre of the stage looked to me like nothing so much as a moulded Scandinavian console from the 60s (a resemblance only heightened when a panel in it slides away bizarrely to reveal the peasant chorus). In the next seen, it acquires a touch of transparency and comes to resemblance an elabourate valence instead. The garden in Act Four is almost completely abstract, just sculptures and koi pond, but the lighting makes it magical.

The singers grew on me, too. At first I thought Amanda Majeski's tall willowy Countess was too poorly matched to Christiane Karg's Susanna for their substitution to make sense even in a dimly-lit space, but clever costuming and hair convinced me. Whatever my friends might think, Keith Jameson's Basilio was way too Wilberforce Humphries for my taste and I was glad I didn't have to suffer through his late aria, which ended up on the cutting-room floor alongside Marcellina's. Again, Katharine Goeldner's voice grated less on me then than it did in Act One, but I still wasn't looking forward to the prospect of a deep drink of it.

So, yeah, iron out the problems of timing etc. in both the stage action and the music and you'll have one terrifically fun romp here. (When all's said and done, it's the most indestructible of Da Ponte's libretti.) It's not enough for me to have another look in a couple weeks, but I'd like to hear from those who do.

Comments

[stephe.livejournal.com]

We saw it a couple of weeks later, and they had ironed out some of the problems, but Figaro was still very stiff -- very "stand and sing." It was almost as if he were in a different performance than Almavia.