SEEN AND HEARD INTERNATIONAL

Mozart, The Marriage of Figaro:  Soloists, The Armonico Consort Chorus and Orchestra / Christopher Monks at Warwick Arts Centre 18.1.2008 (GF)

Production:
Directed by Michael McCaffery
English libretto by Kit Hesketh Harvey
Assistant Director: Judith Sharp
Production Manager / Lighting: Paul Need
Assistant State Manager: Cath Milestone
Deputy Stage Manager: Vickki Maiden
Set Design: Ellie Halls Schiadas
Costumes: Lucy Wilkinson

Cast:
Figaro: Daniel Grice
Susanna: Joanna Boag
Bartolo / Antonio: John Rawnsley
Marcellina: Kate Flowers
Cherubino: Emma Jayakumar
Count: Simon Thorpe
Don Basilio /Don Curzio: N.N.
Countess: Katie Bird
Barbarina: Anna Patalong


Living in Central Scandinavia and primarily covering events in Sweden and to some degree the other Nordic countries, I nowadays rarely visit live events in the UK but luck had it that I more or less stumbled over this performance on a recent visit to Coventry:  it turned out to be one of the first performances of Armonico Consort’s new production of The Marriage of Figaro (the premiere was on the previous evening). They have received much acclaim for their earlier opera productions, including a recent The Magic Flute.

The theatre at the Warwick Arts Centre with its heavily slanted auditorium is not, I presume, primarily intended for opera and the acoustics are on the dry side. It's ideal for spoken theatre and making it easier to catch the witty, sometimes hilarious text of Kit Hesketh Harvey’s English adaptation of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s original libretto. Initially I thought that the sounds of the orchestra were hampered by the relative lack of ambience in the venue but my ears soon adjusted and the advantage was that there was nothing to mask the music. With excellent playing from the small ensemble,  this entailed a slightly recessed but well defined and clear sound and the balance between pit and stage was, from my position at the back of the auditorium, more or less ideal.

From the start of the life-enhancing overture I was impressed by the homogenous sound of the small string  group (6 violins, 2 violas, 1 cello and 1 double bass.) This could be worthy to be compared with a group numbered twice as many, and the alertness of the playing, the freshness and the no-nonsense approach of the overture set the seal on the entire performance.

Whether one likes a performance of The Marriage of Figaro (or any other musical comedy from days long gone by) is very much a question of how far one can accept the theatre conventions of the time. My wife, who is a great opera lover and a great Mozart lover, needs a lot of will-power to attend a performance of The Marriage of Figaro, while she can sit through any number of listening séances of the same work in our home. Figaro belongs to the run-in-run-out category of operas and the finale is one of those numerous disguise-and-confusion scenes, where people don’t even recognize their own spouses. Considering the shortage of electric lights in the late 18^th century it might be understandable that there could be confusion and this scene was also played in half-dusk in this production. But no, my wife says, it is still not believable. And, she adds, there are  interminable scenes where one wants the action to move on. Just take that scene in the second act when it takes half an hour for the Count to get the door opened to the cabinet where Cherubino is, supposedly, locked in. My usual explanation of this  is that it is a central scene where a lot of the conflicts and relations between the main characters are unveiled and so can be seen as an equivalent to a slow-motion sequence in a film. But even I have to admit that it is protracted to such a degree that it is only Mozart’s marvellous music that saves it. Of course there are other things as well which feel dated and difficult to apply on present-day life; the ‘droit de Seigneur’ for example, the master’s right to spend the night with the bride-to-be, but I believe that this is less of a problem, even without the historical knowledge from today’s viewers.

This version of The Marriage of Figaro, has as so often is the case, been transported to the present day – in a fairly moderate way, it should be added. The sets are unprovocative with furniture and other props that could be found in any home – whether middle class or higher up – at any time during the last fifty years; the costumes are timeless-to-unassuming-modern – couldn’t be offensive to anyone I suppose and, thank God, no Levis jeans and no jogging shoes! On the contrarym  it seems that the director has picked ideas from all times: the Count in the third act is dining alone, sitting at the short side of the table and being served his soup by a butler in supposed 18^th century manner, but in the second act when he comes to the Countess’s rooms he has not been out hunting – he is carrying a golf-bag. In the concluding garden scene Figaro is running about with an electric torch and there are other anomalies as well. Nothing really to be irritated about but quite often to be amused by.

Beaumarchais’s original play had deep political undertones and Figaro could be seen as a representative of the people, opposing against the noblesse. This was toned down by Da Ponte in his libretto, but of course it can be interpreted in different ways and some opera directors have very decidedly presented Figaro as a revolutionary. Michael McCaffery sees Figaro less as a play of ideologies, rather as conflicts on a personal level – the employee (Figaro) dissatisfied with his boss (the Count), but he doesn’t join a political party or fight on the barricades.

The young cast have willingly subordinated themselves to the director’s intentions, which, it seems, leave room for freedom for the individuals. On the performance that I saw the announced  Don Basilio and Don Curzio, Oliver White, was unable to appear and was substituted by a tenor, whose name I unfortunately didn’t catch. He sang his roles from a place beside the stage, from the score and should be applauded for his lively reading of roles that apparently were new to him. Some of the others, notably the experienced Kate Flowers as Marcellina, obviously stepped out of their customary behaviour and communicated with this new Don Curzio/Don Basilio. Kate Flowers actually stole the whole show for a while in the last act and it felt a bit unfair that she was denied her aria. That is of course quite common practice, since the aria isn;t one of the most inspired ones, and it would have prolonged the performance even further. The other veteran in the ensemble, baritone John Rawnsley, doubling as Bartolo and Antonio, is also an excellent actor and reaped laurels through his expressive body language. Vocally he was not quite up to the requirements: both roles are for a bass singer and Bartolo’s aria needs those crucial low notes and a more booming delivery than Rawnsley can produce today. Younger readers – and possibly some older ones too – who are not familiar with opera history a couple of decades back, should know that John Rawnsley took part in one of the most sensational opera productions of the 1980s, the ENO’s Rigoletto, which director Jonathan Miller had transported from Medieval Italy to 1920s Chicago and the gangster circles there. Rawnsley played the title role, and the production not only was taken on tour to North America – even the MET – but was televised and recorded on LP and CD – the latter nowadays available in Chandos’s “Opera in English” series.

Daniel Grice was a good-looking and efficient Figaro with an agreeable voice but he lacked the bass-baritone depth and the penetrating power that is needed most of all in Figaro’s last act aria. Grice sang it musically well but a bit too pale. Simon Thorpe’s Count was on the other hand powerful, almost bordering on delirious once or twice and it would have been interesting to see those two singers change roles.

Joanna Boag was a charming Susanna, singing this largest of Mozart roles (I believe) with great confidence and her last act aria was lovely. Cherubino is of course a notoriously difficult role to cast, and to play, and unfortunately very few young women have the boyish looks and bodily constitution for this trouser role. Emma Jayakumar was as good as any I have seen, bar Christine Schäfer on a recent DVD, and she managed to behave like a clumsy teenage boy when she/he was disguised as a girl in the third act’s wedding celebrations. Her singing was good, as was the likewise young Anna Patalong’s as Barbarina, sounding suitably unhappy and unschooled in her little aria at the beginning of the fourth act. The greatest singing – if not specifically acting; the role is too static to invite really great acting – was from Katie Bird as the Countess. Here was a classy voice, beautiful, creamy and with a sensitive quick vibrato, which in her first aria seemed a little over-nervous – which it might have been – but she soon settled and I wouldn’t be surprised if she before long has advanced to great things.

To sum it up: a well conceived, not particularly barnstorming but entertaining, well acted and consistently well sung performance. Later this year it can be seen during the Brighton Festival in May, at the Bath Festival in the end of May and directly after that at the Helix, Dublin.


Göran Forsling

The Armonico Consort's Opera page is Here


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