The Marriage of Figaro review – Dig this opera a permanent grave
What’s this? There is an angel. Never, in my 50 years of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro delight-sampling has there ever been an angel. Check synopsis too, perhaps, correct momentary Biden lapse.
Nope. No angel. Pure invention. Not even as potentially fictitious as a Hunter Biden legal fee due to Faegre, a law firm specialising in Chinese litigation. Or, even as gossamer transparent as a 10 per cent holding in Angel Enterprises, reserved for the Big Guy.
This diminutive Puti, a Cherubimo, sporting stubby, white-feathered wings, a fixed grin and an annoying addiction to cavorting distractingly about, was entirely the invention of Claus Guth, a cutting-edge producer who has built a thirty-year career on knowing better than composers and librettists.
In interviews on his productions, Guth consistently insists he sees “something else” — that the world has missed. For a couple of centuries. Silly old world. It is fashionable to indulge in this fantasy.
Apparently, Guth thought the characters in Fígaro should be controlled by external forces. Not the combination of contradictory, blazing human emotions that drive Mozart’s and da Ponte’s interpretation of Beaumarchais’ satirical play.
Blaming an external force destroys the whole “human nature is even more powerful than the 18th-century class system” point of Fígaro. The entire satire is rendered void.
And, boy, that distracting angel got everywhere. First, he climbed in from Cherubino’s exiting window — en route to flowerpot destruction — stage right. Then, appeared from a door at the top of a staircase, high stage left; next, snuck in from a closet; strode in boldly stage left; even shot up through a trapdoor.
And, there was the feather blizzard. More feathers than clunking a pigeon with a windscreen at 70mph on a motorway. The angel cast them from his bag. They descended from the flies. They came out of his trousers. They blew up from a trapdoor in clouds.
Angel dust might have got up the singers’ noses, so feathers it had to be. By the interval, we were knee-deep in Madrid. There were the apples. Dotted by Sig. Puti in front of each character during the overture. The one in front of El conde was bitten. I couldn’t Adam and Eve the symbolism.
Suddenly, the angel shot across the stage, circumnavigating the characters on a unicycle, jumped on El conde’s back during his soul searching Act III aria, wrestling him to the ground. Performed magic tricks. Juggled.
The only device to which Cupid did not resort was to criss-cross his wings distractingly Basic Instinct style, “à la mode de House of Commons opposition front bench leg artistes”. Some people need to become more familiar with trouser roles.
The very movement of the characters was controlled by his outstretched, mesmeric hand, frequently reducing action to slo-mo, causing them to contort, or alternatively, twitch wildly. He/She/It El angel was in control.
Guth’s stage was white, bare, unfurnished and relentlessly boring. Not a stick of furniture in sight. No art. No soft furnishings, apart from long white voile curtains. So, nowhere for Cherubino or El conde to hide during the Act II bedroom scene. Unchanging through all IV Acts. Save, during the final garden scene a projector threw in some unconvincing dappling.
It was a reminder that projection technology in 2005, when this production launched controversially at Salzburg, was in its infancy. Nowadays, even small theatre companies — as in New York City Opera’s recent The Garden of the Finzi-Continis — can achieve wonders at the click of a button. This was like watching a 1970’s orange Lava Lamp slowly ooze its bubbles from top to bottom. Very yesterday’s kitsch.
It would be cruel to mention the absurd, hanging upside down El conde, framed in an illuminated doorway while singing gamely in Act III. Cherubino being decked out in a Death in Venice twelve-year old’s sailor suit. Barbarina and her pals pouting in school uniform, hair in bunches.
That Cherubino and La condesa wrestled in inappropriate, steamy clinches on the floor. Conventionally, sly glances bring the countess and Cherubino to the cliff edge of impropriety, but never beyond.
So, I mention all of it. Time and the onward march of political correctness have rendered this production the output of a purblind pre-Savile era. I’m not unusually squeamish, but I felt distinctly uncomfortable.
Why the Teatro Real management was so tin-eared to modern mores to revive instead of burying this travesty from a bygone age is beyond me. It was like spotting a colleague watching porn on a mobile device in the House of Commons chamber. Inappropriate. Tout court.
Teatro Real, capacity 1,700, is a wonderful venue for opera. Intimate, with fabulous acoustics. Full house. Sitting mid stalls, the impression is of being enveloped in surround sound. Sparse use of plush velvet, sound-absorbent seating delivers.
And what sound this was from the house orchestra under the baton of English conductor, Ivor Bolton, music director in Madrid since the 2015-16 season. Bolton is steeped in Mozart, having been chief conductor of the Mozarteum Orchestra of Salzburg for twelve years between 2004 – 2016. Mr Mozart.
No extraneous angels in the pit. Bolton’s orchestra delivered unadulterated magic. Beautifully articulated sound, with warmth and a fine sense of pace.
Outstanding amongst a strong cast was Spanish bel canto soprano, María José Moreno, singing La condesa de Almaviva. Her voice, exuding warmth, easily filled the auditorium. She has sung in La Scala, Milan, but deserves more international prominence.
Her experience in the Spanish Zarzuela lyric/dramatic tradition gives her an ability to engage the audience directly and she brought the Teatro Real house down with the loudest ovation post aria and at curtain call. I would travel far to hear her perform the role of Countess in Strauss’ Der Rosenkavalier. Casting directors, please note.
American mezzo-soprano, Rachael Wilson, sang Cherubino and overcame the absurdity of the character, as cast. In 2019, Wilson joined the ensemble of Staatsoper de Múnich, extending her career across the Atlantic from New York. Watch for her popping up increasingly in other European houses.
Anyone who can overcome that sailor suit is an operatic force to be reckoned with. Wilson delivered perfectly crafted, seemingly spontaneous (they never are) ornamentations in her aria reprises, but never flaunted her skill. Terrific stuff.
Vito Priante, an Italian baritone, sang Figaro. No-fault of his that the vibrancy of the passionate Figaro had been directed out of the role. He was cast as an actuary, from the opening scene, measuring the space for the marital bed in his and Susanna’s quarters, through to his discombobulation in Act IV when he is duped into thinking his wife has been unfaithful with El conde in the garden.
Singers often apologise for performing with a frog in their throat. Andre Schuén, the Italian baritone who sang El conde, was forced to sing with the angel on his back. The episode was farcical and hats off to Schuen for putting up with it, never mind maintaining a modicum of seriousness while being “Old Man of the Sea” wrestled around the stage, and eventually floored. Still in full flow.
Susanna was soprano Julie Fuchs, who graduated from the Conservatorio Nacional Superior de Música de París. She coped well with a dowdy costume and with more inspired direction could have been Fígaro’s perfect foil.
El angel was Uli Kirsch. Who was very good at…well, what he had been asked to do. Not his fault that I wished he had been asked to do something else. Somewhere else. Anywhere else. He first performed the mute role invented by Guth when this production premiered in Salzburg.
A juggler and acrobat, Kirsch also appeared, inverted but unsupported, from time to time. I later learnt he became World Unicycle Champion in 1998. An achievement Guth was clearly determined should not go unremarked. Never knowingly let a renowned unicyclist go to waste.
Yet to come in Madrid this season, Umberto Giordano’s Siberia, “a scenic proposal” by the Senor Serrano Group, Extinçion — about how the conquistadores screwed up — Arthur Honegger’s Joan of Arc at the Stake and Verdi’s Nabucco.
No one can accuse Teatro Real of being short of ambition. The company is capable of wonderful work and delivers top-class musical interpretation. Their need for mounting co-productions and resurrect mothballed familiars is nowadays an unavoidable economic necessity for most companies. Ask New York’s mighty Met. Their next Ring Cycle will be a co-production with English National Opera.
But, someone please hammer a stake through this Guth horror production and send it to a permanent grave. Else, El angel may be encouraged to take wing again.
And, another thing!
Casually scan your opera programme. “In case of an air raid alarm, all spectators must go to the bomb shelter of the theatre. Therefore, the number of seats is limited.” As in Covid times, except for the bomb shelter thing. Prosaic, even. Where are you?
London’s Second World War Blitz Spirit is alive and well — in Lviv, Ukraine. Vlad’s whizzbangs, hypersonic missiles, cluster bombs, crumbly tanks and reluctant conscripts have been unable to keep the late 19th-century Neo-Renaissance, Neo-Classical, Art Nouveau, wondrous melange confection of a glam opera house dark.
House management is used to trouble. Promotional literature phlegmatically notes, “the house has remained standing, through several changes in history”. I’ll say.
Lviv reopened on 1 April with a series of concerts for adults and children entitled. In Victory We Trust. Art inspires us to live.
This is no one-off, two-finger gesture to Putin. Giselle, 29 April; Joy, the Mystery of Spring, a children’s introduction to opera; Hope, Liturgical Concerts of Dmytro Bortniansky and a Ballet Gala on 30 April. More is promised.
The 18th-century composer Bortniansky is a national identity crisis in his own right. Tugged over by Ukraine and Russia as their own, he served at the court of Catherine the Great but was born in Ukraine. He was the equivalent of Italy’s Palestrina – and as influential on succeeding generations of composers.
I recommend Lviv’s online 3D Tour. With 28 samples of past performances, it’s as close as I’m going to get until easyJet reopens routes post-conflict.
In 1989, before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union, there was a fabled performance of the Ukraine National Anthem in the opera house. Humbling to learn that spirit lives on.
Tchaikovsky edited Bortniansky’s liturgical works in the 19th century and brought them back to the repertoire. They remain central to Orthodox sacred music.
“Slava Ukraini!”