Le nozze di Figaro, Royal Academy of Music, 21 March 2023

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Images: Craig Fuller

Count Almaviva – Vitor Bispo
Countess Almaviva – Madison Horman
Susanna – Luiza Willert
Figaro – Michael Ronan
Cherubino – Georgia Mae Ellis
Marcellina – Chloe Harris
Bartolo – Wonsick Oh
Basilio – Magnus Walker
Don Curzio – George Curnow
Antonio – Oleksandr Ilvakhin
Barbarina – Clara Onif
Two Bridesmaids – Cerys MacAllister, Clover Kayne

Stephen Medcalf (director)
Jamie Vartan (designs)
Simon Corder (lighting)

Chorus

Royal Academy Sinfonia

Alice Farnham (conductor)

Countess Almaviva (Madison Horman), Susanna (Luiza Willert)

The first day of Spring brought the welcome sight of daffodils in Regent’s Park, followed a few yards away by the recurring epiphany that is The Marriage of Figaro at the Royal Academy of Music. Our world may still be in dire straits, but there was something to lift the mood, as was the performance given by an excellent young cast of singers from Royal Academy Opera in a new production by Stephen Medcalf.

Medcalf lightly updates the action to the mid-twentieth century. Those with superior knowledge of fashions in military uniforms will be able to tell me more precisely when. It does no harm, enables the action still to speak pretty much for itself, and avoids the danger of fetishising eighteenth-century costumes to no particular end. The droit du seigneur might sit a little oddly with that on paper; yet as we all know, powerful male predators reinvent it constantly—and many of the finest Figaro productions have found explicit parallels elsewhere. Here, since the principal difference is of ‘look’, rather than substance, it really need not matter to anyone save the dullest Beckmesser. Where Medcalf particular scores is in imparting such a fine sense of theatre, and enabling the cast to do likewise. From the very first scene, one sees that Figaro and Susanna have learned to work together, as have the singer-actors portraying them; the drama could barely unfold more naturally as a result. Where it becomes stylised, as in a striking section of slow motion acting during the second-act finale, Medcalf has listened to the score and reacts accordingly, to the benefit of stage and pit alike. Simon Corder’s lighting similarly follows suit—and, on occasion, leads. And in scenes notorious for potential confusion – they are not especially so, yet some directors nonetheless manage to make a pig’s ear of them – Medcalf’s calm yet fond professionalism clarifies rather than obscures. Who is who in the garden during the fourth act is a case in point, though a curmudgeon (who, me?) might ask: without a degree of confusion, would they actually act in that way at all?

Count Almaviva (Vitor Bispo)

Each of the singers had something excellent to contribute. For me, the absolute pick of the bunch was Luiza Willert’s Susanna. She did not put a foot, or pitch a note, wrong; one came to realise quite how much of a lynchpin the role is, and how much the rest of the cast benefited from her spirit, her tirelessness, and her vocal artistry alike. Not that Michael Ronan’s Figaro paled by comparison. Here was a similarly human portrayal, alert to words, music, and gesture, and their alchemic combination. Vitor Bispo’s Count was startlingly good, full of toxic yet alluring masculinity, yet assuredly human nonetheless. His third-act aria was a true highpoint of the evening, recognised by the audience as such. Madison Horman’s Countess offered a lovely ‘Porgi, amor’ in particular; she conducted herself with great dignity throughout. As is so often the case, a small theatre worked wonders in Mozart, enabling us truly to engage with the characters and their interaction. Georgia Mae Ellis as Cherubino responded strongly to the comedy of Medcalf’s direction, as did Magnus Walker as a clerical Basilio. Clara Onif’s cavatina as Barbarina as so often had one wish she had more to sing, but what she did – assured stage presence included – she did very well indeed. There was no weak link, though; a fine company on stage had been created.

Barbarina (Clara Orif)

 

Alice Farnham’s conducting was sometimes rather hard-driven, the Overture a case in point. The abruptness of some orchestral phrase-endings also attested to puzzling mannerisms of ‘period’ performance. For the most part, though, Farnham maintained and propelled the flow of action well. There were a few – a few too many – noticeable cases of singers and orchestra falling apart, for a number of bars rather than beats, but rehearsal time is never enough and Farnham always ensured they came back together. Occasional thinness of violin tone was regrettable, but again that was doubtless to be attributed to a way of hearing Mozart that is simply not mine. The Royal Academy Sinfonia otherwise showed much to recommend itself, and will surely have learned much from the experience. Alexsander Ribeiro de Lara’s harpsichord continuo playing was excellent throughout: doing what it should with care and imagination, without narcissistically drawing attention to itself as is far too often the case nowadays. Whatever my misgivings orchestrally, this was a life-affirming Figaro at a time when such is sorely needed.

The Rake's Progress, Royal Academy of Music, 24 November 2022

Susie Sainsbury Theatre

Tom Rakewell – Ryan Vaughan Davies
Anne Trulove – Cassandra Wright
Nick Shadow – Jacob Phillips
Father Trulove – Hovhannes Karapetyan
Sellem – Samuel Kibble
Baba the Turk – Rebecca Hart
Mother Goose – Georgia Mae Ellis
Keeper of the Madhouse – Duncan Stenhouse.

Frederic Wake-Walker (director)
Anna Jones (designs)
Charlotte Burton (lighting)
Ergo Phizmiz (collage, animation, AI image generation and illustration)
Lottie Bywater (illustration and animation)

Chorus
Royal Academy Sinfonia
Trevor Pinnock (conductor)

Blessed by varied approaches to its staging and performance, The Rake’s Progress seems to remain eternally itself (whatever that might mean, as a sometime Prince of Wales might have put it). Not unlike Stravinsky’s evergreen score, the cleverer and in many respects the more involving the more one knows it, everything may seem to come from somewhere else, and in a sense it does; but equally, in another sense, it does not. It makes for great theatre, almost no matter what, and Royal Academy Opera certainly achieved that, as indeed it did when I reviewed an earlier production here by John Ramster, seven years ago. 

This new incarnation, directed by Frederic Wake-Walker, relies heavily on eye-catching animation (Ergo Phizmiz) and images of present-day London from Downing Street to City towers to (presumably former) local authority buildings in their shadow. In one sense (yes, Janus-faced again), it was not always clear to me what it might all add up to. Another Rake placing London at its very heart, Simon McBurney’s as seen in Aix, for me penetrated deeper. For instance, with cardboard boxes—a very large one being Baba the Turk’s sedan chair—arriving alongside partygoers on Downing Street, I assumed we might have some sort of insight into more notorious parties still; yet instead, we headed somewhere else. The party had moved on—as, of course, so many Covid partygoers urged us to. Perhaps indeed that was the point, for earlier eighteenth-century costumes and Arcadia notwithstanding, this was a Rake for the age of Instagram, chorus members eager to snap pictures of Baba once she had emerged.

The odd thing was that Baba simply seemed to be a celebrity, with no evident reason for notoriety and certainly no beard: a sort of cross between Su Pollard and Lady Gaga. Again, perhaps that was the point. There were plenty of visual jokes, which kept a lively audience amused. And who is to say, after all, that one does not miss the point if one does not remain on the surface level? With boxes strewn across scenes, signs of transitory lives, and bubble wrap emerging ingeniously from them, that certainly did seem to be part, at least, of the point. The melancholy work of Bedlam inmates at the end, refashioning material that once had made up their party clothes, was an excellent touch. 

Stravinsky points both ways, of course; so too, arguably, does Auden. Trevor Pinnock’s conducted a lively and generous account of the score, the Royal Academy Sinfonia sharp, pointed, yet far from inexpressive. Occasionally I missed greater numbers in the pit, but chamber forces had virtues of their own, not least in solo work, where reference to eighteenth-century music(s) in particular truly hit home. The orchestra contributed greatly to the gaiety of the occasion, but also to its poignancy, and not only in the final act. Lost moments of Cosi fan tutte, suspended in musical animation, made their fleeting point almost as strongly as the fatal games of the graveyard scene (for which special mention should go to the excellent harpsichordist Alexsander Ribeiro de Lara). The chorus, very much a collection of soloists, in gesture and musical line, who could yet come together as more than the sum of their parts, was not the least shining light of the evening’s entertainment. 

Nor too were the young soloists, many of them doubtless heading towards careers in whatever remains of the opera business after our Downing Street masters and ‘Arts Council England’ have had their say. Like Stravinsky—Auden too—they may have to emigrate. Good luck to them, if so, if Brexit-Insel continues to treat them as seems likely. Ryan Vaughan Davies was a memorable Tom Rakewell, neglecting neither implied poignancy of situation nor irresistible allure of the moment. Whether one should sympathise or not is perhaps a moot point; it would, however, have been difficult to fail to do so.

Likewise, from other angles, the rest of the cast—who might, after all, on paper seem difficult to like, let alone to love. Cassandra Wright’s Anne combined cleanness and beauty of Mozartian line with the fleshed-out character of his heroines: a combination far from always achieved. Jacob Phillips’s dark and dangerous Nick Shadow involved us, like it or not. Hovhannes Karapetyan’s dark-voiced, seemingly generous-of-heart Father Trulove, Georgia Mae Ellis’s fun-loving yet formidable Mother Goose, and Rebecca Hart’s capricious yet, at the last, deeply human Baba the Turk all added novelty to their roles without departing unduly from what we (fancied we) already knew. Samuel Kibble’s lively Sellem and Duncan Stenhouse’s compassionate Keeper of the Madhouse rounded off a cast with no weak links and excellent interaction. Perhaps, indeed, that was the point.