THIS new
production of a Mozart masterpiece is good example of Opera North doing what it
ought to do. Making opera accessible while keeping to high musical and
production standards should be the company’s watchword, and this fulfils it.
That’s not
to say that everything made sense or hit perfection – but there have been very good
productions in the past to compare with. In Jo Davies’ new one it’s sung in
English (Jeremy Sams’ clever translation) with no surtitles to distract
attention – so the comedy is visual as well as verbal and the singers have to
put the lines over.
They all
manage that well, some very well. The interesting thing for me was that Quirijn
de Lang, as Count Almaviva, came over so sympathetically, with his attempts to
play the old-style aristocrat boss frustrated by his servants (and, of course,
the women whose plotting crosses the class barriers completely). He is a superb
singer, too.
That’s not
to do down Richard Burkhard’s performance as Figaro, which was well acted and
finely sung, but I noticed that de Lang uses a conversational style of
recitative singing (almost Sprechgesang) that sometimes sits a little loosely
to the notation, whereas the other principals are all stricter.
There’s
also an element in the production which focuses on the crumbling façades of an upstairs-downstairs
social setting (literally so, in the case of Leslie Travers’ set designs, and
emphasized by the costuming – Gabrielle Dalton – in a Downton Abbey sort of period),
so the tottering structure of feudal power becomes a powerful concept.
Davies’
great achievement here is to get all the singers to find real human
personality, not caricature, in their acting. Some of them were strikingly
successful. I don’t remember a less harridan-like Marcellina before (Gaynor
Keeble, looking a tiny bit like Imelda Staunton), and Henry Waddington – always
a great character actor – is really believable as Dr Bartolo.
Silvia Moi
and Ana Maria Labin both look their parts, acting and singing beautifully as
Susanna and the Countess respectively, and Helen Sherman tackles the difficult
task of being a lovestruck teenage boy with gusto.
It’s
strongly cast all round – good to see Ellie Laugharne making her contribution
as Barbarina – and conductor Alexander Shelley pilots everything with skill and
sympathy from the pit. It may not plumb all the emotional depths, but this
Marriage Of Figaro is quality entertainment.
Repeated
on Saturday.
****
Robert
Beale
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