Opera Reviews
28 March 2024
Untitled Document

A change of costume



by John Corbett
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
Opera Australia
Sydney Opera House, Sydney
17 March 2012

Photo: Branco Gaica'It's only a change of costume," exclaims the perplexed Count Almaviva towards the end of the long array of disguises, deceptions and other romantic trickeries that make up the plot of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro. They are words that are useful to keep in mind when discussing this new production by the Australian opera director, Benedict Andrews, because discussion there surely will be. For opera-goers with traditionalist leanings, this staging presents a number of challenges.

The production, which finished its inaugural season in Sydney on March 24, has some very good things going for it. The set design by Sydney-based designer Ralph Myers is ingenious, elegant and consistently good to look at, as is the excellent lighting by Nick Schlieper, assisted by David Parsons. The performances I saw at a matinee a week before the season ended were all sound and seasoned, as were the ensemble work and the costumes and choreography. In the garden scenes in Act IV, the opera achieved several moments of perfect formal beauty.

The production is 'modern' in style, but not aggressively so. The director and designer have chosen to 'translate' the grand ménage of the Count and Countess of Almaviva into a Modernist-style residence in a gated community, complete with security guards. The neutral-coloured sets serve to focus attention on the cast and when colour is used, as on Marcellina's scarlet blouse, or in the Pantone-coloured 'leaves' that stream down, ticker-tape style, in Act IV, it's all the more effective. A nifty, modular set design allows parts of the residence to emerge from or slide back into the wings, and the audience also has a satisfying 'eye of God' view of the goings-on behind walls and doors.

That said, there is a fair bit for traditionalists to contend with, starting with one of the most impressive overtures in opera being turned into a background soundtrack for an opening scene of cell phone-toting domestic staff arriving and changing into their uniforms, gossiping, bitching and admiring Susanna's wedding dress. Much as one appreciates the director's artistic intention and the theatrical imperative of having some kind of stage business at this point, it is difficult to accept.

Traditionalists will also have difficulties with the fact that the production is performed in English, although the first virtue of the translation, by Jeremy Sams, is its liveliness. The mostly Australian audience at my performance was thoroughly amused by Susanna's description of Marcellina in Act I as a 'gaudy old parakeet', and there were more chuckles when Marcellina was seen off-stage after another sparring match with: 'Bugger off, you old bitch!' The second virtue of Sams' translation is that it makes the Byzantine complications of the plot easier to follow and it notably doesn't stand in the way of the music - although this opera frankly sounds better when sung in Italian. The more important arias, duets and choruses are accompanied by (English) surtitles.

Since the singers were well settled-in to their roles in what is essentially an ensemble work, no individual performance stood out. Mention should be made though of the consistently beautiful singing of the Russian-born soprano, Elvira Fatykhova, as Countess Almaviva, and of Anna Yun, a replacement on the day for Dominica Matthews as Cherubino, whose Chaz Bono-style costume gave her creditable performance as a horny adolescent an extra frisson. More wit was provided by Kanen Breen as a flamingly gay Don Basilio; by Jud Arthur, the New Zealand baritone who, as a decrepit Dr Bartolo, wheeled around an oxygen bottle on a trolley, and by Clifford Plumpton, possibly the first-ever Antonio to sing Mozart with a broad Australian accent.

The cast were also a limber lot, popping in and out of big Maytag-style washing machines in the Act I laundry scene, rolling on and off the Countess's bed and out of bedroom windows and generally making good use of the many opportunities for physical comedy that the farcical plot provides. Only once did the action lapse into slapstick; at the end of Act II, where the characters enter simultaneously into states of emotional emergency, the stage business seems to express the director's wish to make a thematic point rather than anything that emerges naturally from the music or plot. It has to be said too, that despite sterling efforts to avoid longueurs, the second half of Act II felt interminable. As it stands, the production is three hours in length with one twenty-minute interval (it stretched mercifully to nearly forty on the day). Some of the less important passages and their da capos in Act II could have been cut.

Would Mozart have minded that? We know enough about him as a flexible, jobbing composer and a man of the theatre to bet that he probably wouldn't. Nor would he, I think, have minded the opera's 'change of costume' into its modern setting and English translation. The production doesn't convey some of the more socially subversive aspects of the libretto as forcefully as the director might wish in his programme notes, but it is a handsome and intelligent effort that clearly expresses Mozart's eternal truths about the vagaries of the human heart.

Best of all, the production doesn't stand in the way of the music - which the Australian Opera and Ballet Orchestra, under the baton of Anthony Legge, performed with their usual aplomb. Like Mozart's contemporaries and everyone since, you come away from the performance humming "Non piů andrai", "Voi che sapete" or several others from the stream of perfect arias, duets and ensembles this masterpiece provides. "Ah tutti contenti saremo cosi" (Everyone will be happy now), the cast and chorus sing at the close of Act IV. That definitely won't apply to this production, but Mozart's genius is sufficient to carry pretty much anything you throw at it, including maid's uniforms.

Text © John Corbett
Photo © Branco Gaica
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