Count Almaviva – Sebastian
Wartig
Countess Almaviva – Iulia Maria
Dan
Susanna – Athanasia Zöhrer
Figaro – Martin-Jan Nijhof
Cherubino – Grace Durham
Marcellina – Sabine Brohm
Bartolo – Matthias Henneberg
Don Basilio – Aaron Pegram
Barbarina – Tahnee Niboro
Don Curzio – Gerald Hupacj
Antonio – Chao Deng
Bridesmaids – Beate Apitz,
Heike Liebmann
Johannes Erath (director)
Katrin Connan (set designs)
Birgit Wensch (costumes)
Noëlle Blancpain (revival
director, costumes)
Fabio Antoci (lighting)
Francis Hüsers (dramaturgy)
Dancers
Saxon State Opera Chorus (chorus master: Cornelius Volke)
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
Kristiina Poska (conductor)
Rarely can an opera house run
on full cylinders night in, night out – especially when the night before has
entailed a Moses
und Aron premiere. One would not
necessarily expect a starry Elektra
or, indeed, a starry Figaro to
follow. If the performative musical side of this Marriage of Figaro rarely scaled the heights, nor was there
anything truly to complain about. Sebastian Wartig’s Count came close at times,
often strangely underpowered, although he marshalled his forces well at the
very close. Matthias Henneberg’s Doctor Bartolo, moreover, made a strangely
reticent impression in his first-act aria, not helped by Kristiina Poska’s
breathless tempo, surely more suited to Rossini than to Mozart. Otherwise, Iulia
Maria Dan increasingly impressed as a graceful, gracious Countess, Athanasia
Zöhrer’s Susanna likewise grew in communicative character, and Grace Durham’s
Cherubino came up trumps. (When was the last time you heard a Cherubino who did
not?) Nevertheless, when the most memorable singing came from the Barbarina
(Tahnee Niboro) and the Antonio (Chao Deng) it can hardly be accounted a
vintage night in vocal terms.
Poska’s tempi were not, thank
goodness, universally fast, although a brutal Overture had had me fear the
worst. Some, indeed, proved slower than one might have expected, never
ponderous. Given what ghastly perversities we must often endure in Mozart
performance today, there was much for which to be grateful, and it is always a
pleasure to hear the Staatskapelle Dresden in this music, its woodwind section
here especially fine. No, it was not Sir Colin Davis – ‘Der Sir’, as this
orchestra lovingly used to call him, his bust not so far more from my seat, in
the First Balcony foyer – but it was a more than competent account of one of
the most cruelly unsparing, cruelly familiar works in the repertoire: Kapellmeisterei in a far from negative
sense, and not, I suspect, with a great deal of rehearsal.
The problem, however, really
lay with Johannes Erath’s 2015 production. It was once the case that Figaro seemed relatively director-proof;
more recently, however, it seems to have proved as difficult for large houses to
pull off as that notorious directorial graveyard, Don Giovanni. It may sound as if I exaggerate when I say that most
of the excellent Mozart opera I have heard over the past few years has come
from conservatoires, but it is genuinely the case, the Royal
Academy’s 2015 Figaro a case in
point. I say this not, I hope, from a reactionary standpoint. The most
searching, revelatory staging of this opera I have yet to see was Claus
Guth’s Strindbergian reimagining of the work for Salzburg. (Alas, Salzburg’s
record in Mozart since has struggled even to reach mixed; I was relieved not to
have to write for this year’s intolerably vacuous Magic Flute.) Erath tries to do something with the work, which is
surely only to be applauded; any putative prize for effort, however, is
immediately and, moreover, increasingly obscured by condescension, disrespect,
and such tone-deafness as to have one wonder that the director began his career
as a violinist.
The concept, if one may call it
that, seems to be to set the first act, the second and third acts, and the
fourth in different theatrical periods, with nods to their styles (or rather to
their hoariest of clichés as seen, not by them, but by directors of little
imagination yet much talk). The first act thus seems to nod to origins in the commedia dell’arte, but that is really
nothing more than a matter of stylised (twenty-first-century stylised)
costumes. The rest is mostly silliness: Figaro singing whilst his face is up
Susanna’s absurdly large dress and so on. For some reason – or none –
Marcellina lip synches along to much of Bartolo’s vengeance aria until she,
well, stops doing so. Cherubino, pointlessly, sits on an electronically
elevated table rather than hiding as he normally would. (It really is not
difficult to get that scene right, although arch-mediocrity Jean-Louis
Martinoty in Vienna must take the palm for having got it catastrophically
wrong.) There are some interventions from stagehands, here as elsewhere
splendidly executed themselves by dancers. I think, though, we need a little
more – or a little less – metatheatricality than that for it to be worth our
while.
The second and third acts proceed
in that all-purpose ‘pop-eighteenth-century’ look favoured by directors who have
no idea what to do with eighteenth-century opera: wigs with an attitude that is
far fainter than their perruquiers fancy. Keyboard continuo, in itself
excellently played by Sebastian Engel, moves from harpsichord to fortepiano. As
we move toward the fourth and final act, textual ‘interventions’ by the
director become more and more irritating, until we endure interpolations of
French popular song and the removal of all secco
recitative in favour of his own dialogue. All, meanwhile, lounge around the stage
– generally at great distance from one another – in pyjamas. For once, it was a
relief to have the ‘traditional’ cuts observed. Mozart will survive, of course;
so will Lorenzo Da Ponte. But why?
