Glyndebourne, 2012
Robin Ticciati, Michael Grandage, Sally Matthews, Vito Priante, Andrun Iversen, Lydia Teuscher, Isabel Leonard, Ann Murray, Andrew Shore, Sarah Shafer, Colin Judson, Alan Oke, Nicholas Folwell, Ellie Laugharne, Katie Bray
Opus Arte - Blu-ray
Much like their recent production of Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne's 2012 production of Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro updates the work to the 1960s, finding it to be a period that acts as a good modern equivalent for the changing social attitudes that are to be found in Mozart and Beaumarchais' time. If it's not quite a perfect fit here, it works well enough for the purposes of Mozart's version of the work, which is less concerned with the social and political climate than the richness of human values that the work expresses. What is rather more important in Le nozze di Figaro then is how its characters are brought to life, and it's clear from the superb casting here and the fine singing, that this is the principal strength of Glyndebourne's new production.
It's very easy to get complacent about yet another production of The Marriage of Figaro, but one can surely never come away from a performance of this remarkable work with anything but deep admiration and appreciation for the artistry of the work itself. It's a masterfully constructed dramatic farce that nonetheless makes acute observations about human nature and interaction in relation to those important institutions of love and marriage. Le nozze di Figaro also has fully fleshed-out characters of real depth of personality and Mozart's incomparable music that gives it another extra dimension, developing themes, connecting them, bringing a whole unity to the work with warmth and compassion. I doubt that any other composer, past or present, could have achieved what Mozart does with Lorenzo Da Ponte's libretto and Beaumarchais' play.
One can never become complacent about the work itself then, but having been fortunate to have only seen first-rate performances of The Marriage of Figaro, it's easy to think that all the hard work has already been done by Mozart and Da Ponte. Far from it. More than anything else, this 2012 Glyndebourne production reminded me that not only are the singing performances vitally important (in what opera are they not?), but that it's a work that is exceptionally demanding not only on one or two principal roles, but that practically every single role has to be carefully considered for the impact and the interaction they have with the other characters. Will Le nozze di Figaro work with a weak Susanna, Figaro, Almaviva or Countess? What about those "secondary" characters like Cherubino, Marcellina, Bartolo, Don Basilio and Barbarina? The work is undoubtedly strong enough to get along without luxury casting in the lesser roles, but imagine how it great it can be with it.
You only need listen to the music that Mozart has written for them to understand that all its roles are lovingly created and have an important part to play in the whole fabric of the work. That's a lot of roles that it's not only important to get right, but they have to be right with each other. That's the brilliance of Mozart, and it's one of his greatest advancements on the development of opera as an important dramatic artform. It's not all about the arias - although even there The Marriage of Figaro has some of the greatest and most popular arias ever written - but the duets and the ensembles also contribute just as much to the work as a whole. In that respect, Le nozze di Figaro is not only a complete work of undisputed genius, but some 230 years later it's still practically unsurpassed.
You can set the opera in just about any period then and get away with it, even with its references to 'droit de seigneur'. There have always been sleazy bosses after all, and the 1960s is as good a setting then as any. The period however is not taken advantage of to any great extent here other than for purposes of style. In fact, other than showing an exaggerated lack of taste in the clothing styles with flowery wide-collar shirts and big hairdos, there's a curious separation between the characters and the setting which, on the whole, remains for no discernible reason in a country manor in Seville. That's the original setting of course, but it has no specific 60s context. If you had dressed the characters here in period costumes, the set - barring the appearance of a sports car during the overture - would have functioned just as well.
As you would expect from a Glyndebourne production however (and this is from the same team that put together the astonishing Billy Budd), the set design by Christopher Oram is impressive in its attention to detail. The locations are recreated with remarkable realism in the Moorish designs of the architecture, the tiles and the brickwork, and in the the lighting that casts warm orange-brown tones. The set rotates from one scene to the next fluidly, the lighting finding the perfect mood for each scene, the configurations of the rooms working to the requirements of the drama's comic situations. The stage direction from Michael Grandage however seems a little detached and on the serious side, never allowing the figures room to abandon themselves to the glorious wealth of warm, funny and touching sentiments expressed in the work.
I think the same thing could be said about Robin Ticciati's conducting. It's a perfectly good account of the work, but it never reacts to the sentiments or the staging in a way that would bring out its full potential. Which is a little bit of a pity, because there's an exceptional singing cast here that is more than capable of getting to the heart of Mozart's delightful creations. Vito Priante is a big-voiced Figaro with the capability of being almost soulful in his delivery, while Lydia Teuscher is a comparatively lovely and delicate Susanna, innocent more than feisty. Sally Matthews gives us a wonderful melancholic Countess where everything that is essential comes through in the expression of her voice. Andrun Iversen's Almaviva is more of a blustering buffoon than a sleazy predator, and his voice suits that kind of delivery as well as being well-suited to the Glyndebourne stage.
Proving that the secondary roles can raise this work to even greater heights, particularly when you have a strong Cherubino, Isabel Leonard knocked the socks off the Glyndebourne audience, and you can see why in her sparkling, bright performance with a voice of immense richness. The character parts of Bartolo, Barberina and Don Basilio were all delightfully played as well, but I was particularly delighted to see Ann Murray still looking and sounding wonderful as Marcellina. The video recording of the performance is excellent, the colour and the detail all rendered beautifully in the HD-image on the Blu-ray, with fine audio mixes. There are a couple of short features showing the work put into the props and sets, and interviews with the cast that consider the qualities of Mozart's work itself. The Opus Arte dual-layer Blu-ray is all-region compatible, with subtitles in English, French, German, Japanese and Korean.
