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| Images: Robert Workman |
Hackney Empire Theatre
Susanna – Charlotte Schoeters
Figaro – Božidar SmiljanićBartolo – Timothy Murphy
Marcellina – Claire Barnett-Jones
Cherubino – Katherine Aitken
Count Almaviva – Henry Neil
Basilio – John Porter
Countess Almaviva – Emily Garland
Antonio – Alex Otterburn
Barbarina – Lorena Paz Nieto
Don Curzio – Mikhail Shepelenko
Two Girls – Lorena Paz Nieto, Katie Stevenson
Janet Suzman (director)
Fotini Dimou (designs)Jake Wiltshire (lighting)
Victoria Newlyn (choreography)
A lazy assumption I used to
make was that Don Giovanni was, as
the cliché now has it, ‘a director’s graveyard’; it also seemed almost always
to lack something in performance, Daniel
Barenboim being the Furtwänglerian exception. A parallel, or related, lazy
assumption was that The Marriage of
Figaro somehow always survived. Directors felt on surer ground, without the
overt Catholicism of the later opera, which seemingly either mystified – in pretty
much any sense – or repelled them. A good cast would see it through, and surely
singers and conductors could hardly fail to respond to its magic, performing
ideologies notwithstanding. The former assumption still seems to hold, although
I am less inclined to make excuses on behalf of directors who make a mess of
it; it really need not be so difficult as they seem to think it. The problem
really does not lie with the work, and if opera houses present an unholy
composite version from Prague and Vienna, then they only have themselves to
blame. However, many recent performances of Figaro
seem to have fallen prey to the curse too. I shall not list them, but too many
have been dispiriting. And, frankly, one dispiriting Figaro is far too many.
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| Figaro (Božidar Smiljanić) |
Such clouds were well and truly
dispelled in this quickening evening at the Hackney Empire, the first of Royal
Academy Opera’s temporary homes whilst its theatre is renovated. You might
react with scepticism if I tell you that, overall – and opera is always a
business of ‘overall’, as well as ‘in part’, and so on – this was one of the
best Figaros I have seen, certainly
one of the best for quite some time. I really did not have a single cause for
complaint, which is quite something when it comes to Mozart in general and to
this opera in particular, for whom and for which perfection seems, cruelly, to
be the only acceptable response.
Janet Suzman’s production plays
the work pretty straight: no bad thing, Claus
Guth’s Strindbergian conception for Salzburg surely being destined to
remain an exception. One might even, if not paying proper attention, think it
more or less a ‘period’ production to begin with. However, it soon becomes
clear – and indeed always is, so long as one’s eyes are doing a little light
work – that we are not in eighteenth-century Spain, although there certainly
seems to be a kinship, indeed a strong kinship, with Lorenzo da Ponte’s
original setting. We are, in fact, in pre-revolutionary Cuba, as we hear too, as soon as Bartolo’s first
aria, Siviglia having become Havana. Havana, Suzman writes, ‘boasted an
elegant, bedraggled, inward-looking post-colonial aristocracy, a peasant
population desperate for change, and sported perfectly beautiful great houses
on the verge of collapse’. The ‘look’, then, is similar, but not the same; abuses
are similar, if not quite the same; the droit
du seigneur seems eminently credible, perhaps more so than before.
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| Susanna (Charlotte Schoeters) |
However, none of that is
hammered home. The political is present, yet, as with the librettist’s – let us
leave the composer on one side, just for the moment – adaptation of
Beaumarchais, it offers the framework for a human drama, rather than the crux
of it. (One can say that, I think, without having to take refuge in the chimera
of the ‘timeless’, without claiming that a production should not take a more
political stance.) For Suzman, ‘an updated Figaro
urges us to take another long look at the fate of the female protagonists,
rather than resigning ourselves to their classically sanctioned fate.’ And that
seems a good defence of updating and relocating in general. It is handsomely done,
Fotini Dimou’s designs lending an air of faded grandeur, again without
exaggeration, and Jake Wiltshire’s lighting doing what it should, especially
for the garden in the fourth act. Above all, Suzman helps make these characters
credible. They are busy, without that ‘busy-ness’ becoming an end in itself, as
in the irritating Upstairs Downstairs
quality to David
McVicar’s Royal Opera staging. The difference between Mozart as composer of
opera seria and Mozart as composer of
opera buffa can be exaggerated, or
relied upon as a substitute for engagement, but production and performance
truly imparted a sense of what is wondrous and perhaps new here.
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| The Countess (Emily Garland) |
For it was in the performances
themselves that, quite rightly, the magic truly lay. Charlotte Schoeters and
Božidar Smiljanić presented a lively, in no sense caricatured – as can
sometimes be the danger with buffo
characters – Susanna and Figaro. One felt their emotions almost as if they were
one’s own, appreciated their knowingness – and their ignorance. Henry Neill,
looking like a younger version of Jorge Bolet, at times perhaps seemed a little
too young, but if the worst plaint one has is of youth, it is hardly serious.
He captured Almaviva’s mood-swings well, and his lechery, without that descending
into the unwanted realm of farce. His Countess, Emily Garland, enchanted on an
operatic – with or without inverted commas – scale, intimate and grander
gestures at one with her character and that character’s predicament. This was a
worthy successor performance to her
Suor Angelica earlier this year. Cherubinos rarely disappoint; it is such a
gift of a mezzo role. That, however, is no reason to overlook a success such as
that of Katherine Aitken, every moment of her performance, whether musically or
acting, alive to the moment. Every member of the cast shone, and yet was very
much part of a larger whole. To mention just two others, Claire Barnett-Jones
carried off the burden of age with great success as Marcellina, whilst Lorna
Paz Nieto made the most of her small role – a role which yet, so often,
imprints itself upon the memory – as Barbarina. Diction was without exception
excellent; one could have taken dictation, both verbal and musical.
Last but certainly not least,
Jane Glover and the Royal Academy Sinfonia played Mozart’s score to the manoir born. I do not think I have heard
such consummate conducting of Figaro
since the
late Sir Colin Davis. Glover never drew attention to herself, always
sounded at Mozart’s service, and brought the music to life with a knowledge and
wisdom that can only come with years of acquaintance. Her orchestra was crisp,
warm, exciting, beguiling, knowing, innocent: all of those necessary things and
more. It commented upon and partook in the action in equal measure, structure
and ‘expression’ as one. Despite relatively small forces (8.6.4.4.2), this was
a proudly full-sounding ensemble, eminently capable of filling the theatre. So,
I think, was this evening as a whole. If you still have chance, do what you can
to beg, borrow, or steal a ticket. Otherwise, we shall hear May Night next term and, as Glover’s
farewell as Director of Opera, L’incoronazione
di Poppea in the summer.
