Opera review: ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’
‘Figaro’ gets special treatment at MAC
February 25, 2008
by Peter Jacobi
IStrange that promotional material for this year’s Arts Week, devoted to the theme “Politics and the Arts,” makes no thematic mention of what’s playing at the Musical Arts Center. The bill of fare there happens to be “The Marriage of Figaro,” in an adroit production by IU Opera Theater.
The story of Figaro, as first told in a theater trilogy by Beaumarchais, has often been referred to as the first shot of the French Revolution, a comedy that dug bitingly into class warfare, surely a sample of “Politics and the Arts,” dating way back to the 18th century.
Granted, Lorenzo da Ponte, the librettist of the opera that’s called “The Marriage of Figaro,” Mozart’s timeless masterpiece, toned down its political aspects so that the Austrian emperor, Joseph II, could be seduced into allowing the opera to be performed. But political this musical comedy of manners and morals was and continues to be.
And that from the opening moments when servants, the valet Figaro and the maid Susanna, deal with the precarious nature of their marriage, specifically the closeness of residential quarters to their master, Count Almaviva, he of the roving eyes and desire to revive a nobleman’s right to bed a servant’s bride. Ultimately, the count’s plans are thwarted by those he would victimize.
Mozart glorified it with a tune-after-tune score, one that also expresses indelibly the characters’ emotions. And true, when all is sung and done, how singers and orchestra have accomplished their musical duties counts for more than what’s transpired plot-wise.
The musical “how” counted for much on Friday and Saturday evenings as a pair of casts tackled a work as difficult to perform as it is easy to listen to. They had the right mentor. Guest conductor Will Crutchfield, music director of the Caramoor International Festival, is a specialist in vocal music from the 18th and early 19th centuries. He had his singers in a Mozart zone, breathing and emitting style. In the pit, meanwhile, the Chamber Orchestra was setting the tone, right on through to the harpsichordist, Julius Abrahams.
All were maintaining a fleet pace, too. Crutchfield’s approach to Mozart is swift, thereby allowing for restoration of oft-dropped pages from the score and also causing slowed-down dramatic moments to stand out even more strikingly than they otherwise might.
The singers had a sensitive stage director to guide them through the plot: Michael Ehrman, most recently here for last fall’s revival of “Susannah.” Ehrman followed tradition, with here and there a welcome twist to amuse or startle. Robert O’Hearn’s atmospheric sets, first used in 200l, and now allied with Michael Schwandt’s evocative lighting, provided pleasing work space for the performers.
But again, most important in a Mozart opera is what happens musically. The orchestra nobly, fluidly did its share. On stage, the singers, thanks to training and Maestro Crutchfield, served the music honorably, some of them even better than that.
Among the standouts were Sian Davies (on Friday night) and Elizabeth Baldwin (Saturday) as the lonely Countess Almaviva. Davies’ voice of full-bodied cream and Baldwin’s of somewhat lighter and yet still creamy cream fully reflected the heartache embodied in their music. The two Figaros, baritones Aubrey Allicock and Thomas Florio, were splendidly resonant and dramatically lively. One couldn’t complain about the vocal agility exhibited by either of Figaro’s beloved Susannas, sopranos Jacqueline Brecheen or Valerie Vinzant, although Brecheen contributed a touch more glow in her tonal production.
Austin Kness was particularly strong on Friday as Count Almaviva; his bass baritone voice (and thespian manner) exuded passion and anger and, ultimately, rue. On Saturday, Wayne Hu, while most responsive to dramatic demands and musical subtleties, seemed sometimes to hold his baritone back as if in a chamber-sized theater, thereby denying the audience volume sufficient to span the spacious MAC. His approach might benefit from recalibration.
The trouser role of the hormonal teen Cherubino received sufficient comedic awkwardness and vocal agility from Angela Brower and Kira McGirr. From among the well-cast singers in secondary roles, one should give special mention to the two Marcellinas, Amanda Russo and Ursula Kuhar, and to Saturday’s Don Basilio, Carmund White.
The Indiana University Jacobs School of Music would like
to thank the Herald Times for permission to republish this review.
