Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Academy Opera, 30 October 2015

Images: Robert Workman

 

Hackney Empire Theatre

Susanna – Charlotte Schoeters

Figaro – Božidar Smiljanić
Bartolo – 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)

Royal Academy Opera Chorus (chorus master: Frederick Brown)

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Jane Glover (conductor)

 

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.

 

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.

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.

 

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.

Suor Angelica and Gianni Schicchi, Royal Academy Opera, 20 November 2014

Sir Jack Lyons Theatre, Royal Academy of Music

Suor Angelica – Emily Garland

Suor Dolcina - Nika Goric

Monitress – Laura Zigmantaite

Suor Genovieffa – Eve Daniell

Suor Osmina – Kirsty Michele Anderson

Mistress of the Novices – Helen Brackenbury
Abbess – Katie Stevenson
Zia Principessa - Anna Harvey

Lauretta – Charlotte Schoeters

Nella – Eve Daniell
La Ciesca – Katherine Aitken
Zita – Laura Zigmantaite
Gherardo – Richard Dowling
Rinuccio – John Porter
Amantio di Nicolao – Dominic Bowe
Gianni Schicchi – Ed Ballard
Marco – Henry Neill
Betto – Alistair Ollerenshaw
Guccio – Jamie Wright
Maestro Spinelloccio – Timothy Murphy
Pinellino – Michael Mofidian
Simone – Lancelot Nomura
Gherardino – Harriet Eyley

Will Kerley (director)

Jason Southgate (designs)

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Peter Robinson (conductor)

 

Two-thirds of Puccini’s triptych made for yet another excellent evening at the Royal Academy of Music. It may sound exaggerated to say that London’s conservatoire opera performances more often than not put its main houses to shame, but that does genuinely seem to be the case. Productions may be a more fraught issue, but when the vocal performances are superior, that says a great deal concerning both the quality of musicianship on offer at the Royal Academy and elsewhere, and also questionable casting decisions from the Royal Opera (Idomeneo fresh in the memory) and ENO.

 

Comparisons – from which she would have nothing whatsoever to fear – aside, Emily Garland’s Suor Angelica quite floored me: a startling mature performance. This is not the sort of repertoire one really expects to hear from singers so young; indeed, this was the first conservatoire performance I have attended of Puccini. But Garland’s voice was the real thing, her tragic plight involving one as only a fine vocal performance could. Puccini’s mix, especially here, of sadism and sentimentality can be hard to take, but we found ourselves here in expert hands. The supporting cast had not a weak link, and Anna Harvey’s elegantly-sung Zia Principessa made for a cruel foil indeed. My other doubt, a priori, would have concerned a small-ish orchestra, and there were occasions when, even in a small theatre, a few more strings would have helped. However, they were few and far between, and, if I have heard more symphonic Puccini, especially earlier on, than Peter Robinson’s, he was always attentive to the action. Moreover, the final scene’s emotional impact flowed as much from the tauntingly gorgeous orchestral sound as from Garland’s inspired performance. Will Kerley’s keenly-observed production makes excellent use of Jason Southgate’s resourceful set and of course an eager company of nuns; the musical drama, quite rightly, remains our focus, with little to distract us from its unfolding.

 

Gianni Schicchi emerged after the interval in gloriously garish colours – at least so far as the staging was concerned. I sensed a kinship, perhaps coincidental, with Richard Jones’s Covent Garden production, though the updating comes closer to our time, with Rinuccio cheekily capturing moments à la mode on his telephone camera. The liveliness of the direction, every character’s movements and reactions carefully attended to and utterly convincing, even in loving caricature, was matched by a string of fine vocal performances. Again, the cliché of not a weak link in the cast held triumphantly; moreover, there was a real sense, quite an achievement this, of a true ‘company performance’. Ed Ballard’s assumption of the title role was a joy, as alert to words as to music as to stage action: another singer here from whom we shall surely hear more. I doubt that anything will convince me that ‘O mio babbino caro’ is not an unfortunate mistake, a fly in the ointment, though doubtless a case can be made for a moment when the brilliance of Puccini’s scherzo stops. That said, Charlotte Schoeters sang it and the rest of her role beautifully, making a winning pair with John Porter’s ardent Rinuccio. When I say that it is difficult to disentangle the other performances, I mean nothing but praise by that; to attempt to do so would degenerate into a mere repetition of the cast list, and the whole was far more than the sum of the parts. Robinson and the orchestra were perhaps on finer form still, that glistening orchestral brilliance to which I alluded married to an unerring sense of dramatic direction. Congratulations to all concerned!