Ainārs Rubiķis, Conductor; Joe Hill-Gibbins, Director; Johannes Schütz, Set Designer; Astrid Klein,Costume Designer; Matthew Richardson, Lighting Designer.Cast: Mary Bevan,Susanna; David Ireland, Figaro; Neal Davies, Dr Bartolo; Rebecca Evans, Marcellina; Hanna Hipp, Cherubino; Hubert Francis, Don Basilio / Don Curzio; Nardus Williams, Countess Almaviva; Cody Quattlebaum, Count Almaviva; Trevor Eliot Bowes, Antonio; Ava Dodd, Barbarina
This was one of the best and most joyous productions and performances I have seen of The Marriage of Figaro. I have to say straight away that this impact can’t be entirely dissociated from the fact that I was at the show with my younger daughter who was listening to and seeing Figaro for the first time. Inevitably therefore you see and hear it through their eyes and ears as well as your own, and when it’s well received the reaction becomes your own too. It’s also true that I haven’t seen that many productions of the work – the ENO 70’s one with Mackerras, the ROHCG one in the 70’s directed by Peter Hall, the new-ish ROHCG McVicar one, Opera North just before lockdown and that’s probably about it (maybe also a Proms performance of a Glyndebourne production). But, even so, this production by Joe Hill-Gibbons had great virtues – the plot and actions were very clear, it was very funny in parts, the serious and moving aspects were well-handled and hearing it in English, you realise, does give it a different dimension – not least because the surtitles then have to follow exactly what is being said on stage, rather than give a rough approximation in translation, often leaving quite important details out. I understood tonight several aspects of the plot which had escaped me for years listening to it in Italian live and on disc, even with surtitles and translations. Musically, it was also very fine – after a scrambled overture, ridiculously fast, which had me fearing the worst, the conductor, Ainārs Rubiķis was very flexible in his approach to the score – some numbers were even on the slow side. The clarity of the filigree of instruments playing in the scene where Susanna and the Countess are dressing up Cherubino is always a touchstone for me as to how the conductor handles the score, and Rubiķis passed with flying colours. Many other passages had the right lilt or bounce; I felt the Goldilocks approach to Mozart in evidence – not too fast, not too slow – with, for example, a beautiful account of the forgiveness of the Countess for the Count, which featured positively lush playing by the strings, glistening with appropriately Mozartian emotion. The orchestra got the biggest cheer of the evening, and the woodwind in particular played beautifully.
The design aspect of the production polarised the critics. Essentially what you have here is a white wall with four doors, which is on a powered platform that can take the wall up quite high above the stage, giving space underneath for various characters (for instance Susanna in Act 2 when she’s hearing the Count trying to get into the room with Cherubino inside, or for Cherubino to do his garden jump onto a trampoline). The wall can also be pushed back, to give an open space for performance in front of it – useful particularly in Act 4. But there are no pieces of furniture and scarcely any props. The wall can obviously be lit in different ways which reduces the starkness at times, but it is pretty bleak. The four doors are of course ideal for the comings and goings of characters in the plot and were often used to very amusing effect. Given the harshness and lack of clutter, I was intrigued about how the director and designer would handle the Act 4 subterfuge and impersonations – in fact, with Figaro lying downstage looking out at the audience, and a certain measure of dim lighting, it’s convincing. I did miss the bed covers or armchair which normally hides Cherubino in Act 1, though – having Cherubino hide behind the door didn’t always seem convincing. Another aspect of the way people were handled on stage was to have them use a jerky robotic-like movement at times, combined with freezing in positions at the end of a scene or aria. I’m not sure what that was about – some connection with commedia dell’arte came to mind but it didn’t seem to add much. Costumes were modern-ish, with one exception, though not quite contemporary, apart from the Count’s man bun – maybe 1970’s? The exception was Cherubino, who was dressed in vivid colours and shorts, with owlish glassed and ginger hair – the getup made him a figure of fun and in a way less human than the others, – and it left Cherubino looking pretty unmasculine right from the beginning. Jeremy Sams’ translation deserves a glowing mention – funny, pithy, managing rhymes for many of the arias, it had almost none of the toe-curling operatic English you used to see so much of on surtitles or as performed at the Coliseum. The one thing that really was a pity in the production was – perhaps unintentionally (and the ENO is not alone in this) – getting an audience laugh when the Count asks for forgiveness in Act 4.
There were no weak links in the cast, though as in other performances recently my auditory memory sometimes hears great figures of the past singing these roles as their successors perform. An interesting issue was that, musically, there was no vocal decoration in the big numbers – maybe it was thought to be too ‘operatic’ for an audience which did, as ENO would have hoped, have lots of people coming to the work new. Nardus Williams, tall, regal, was an excellent Countess – Dove Sono perhaps sung with more colour and deftness of touch than Porgi Amor – and she was also a good actor and team player who didn’t stand apart from the madcap stuff going on on stage. Mary Bevan was, as Susanna always is, in control at the centre of the madness and her big aria in Act 4 was beautifully delivered. Some critics were not that impressed by Cody Quattlebaum (great name!) as the Count but I found him impressive – a warm voice, agile acting and striking the right balance between being very unpleasant while not becoming a caricature. Hanna Hipp acted very well, and while her voice doesn’t have the creamy tone you ideally need for the role, or the ability to sing softly with great beauty, her performance was thoroughly satisfactory. Rebecca Evans made much more than usual of Marcellina -this was in its own way a star performance. About David Ireland as Figaro I felt more conflicted – he has a big, energetic stage presence, a resonant voice and excellent diction – but he just sounded, well, angry all the time – there was insufficient variation of tone, I think I mean………
Anyway, an excellent evening….now, onto the Regents Opera Ring next week.
John's musical journey 