The Marriage of Figaro

This is a welcome revival of Sir David McVicar’s magnificently dramatized and designed 2015 production for Opera Australia.

Many of the original, international cast superbly reprise their roles, notably Ukraine’s Andrei Bondarenko as the autocratic and lustful Count, Russia’s Ekaterina Sadovnikova as his anguished wife and Italian bass Paolo Bordogna as his scheming servant Figaro.

Betrothed to the sassy Susanna (Stacey Alleaume), Figaro needs to outwit the Count’s bullying pursuit of virtue. And Susanna joins her mistress in a scheme to reprimand the Countess’ faithless husband. 

It’s a delightful, part dark comedy of sexual and social politics, but intensely moving as the different characters sing different facets of love’s pleasure and pain. Anna Dowsley, for example, again, matches the leads, as the tenderly lovelorn page-boy Cherubino – he chases everyone.

McVicar is so sharp eyed in moving the action light-footedly that the comedy never becomes buffoonery, the pace never sags and the music, again under Guillaume Tourniaire’s energetic conducting, never freezes the performers into that stand-and-deliver posture familiar in old Mozart productions.

McVicar’s naturalistic blocking is beautifully played out across Jenny Tiramani’s parade of ever larger castle rooms, set in 1640s Spain, with a sparse grandeur that serves a modernity of expression but is historically appropriate to this tale of autocracy. Mozart’s opera of 1796, and its source, Beaumarchais’ controversial play, were both originally set – like his production – back in the 17th Century.

Tiriamini’s rich costumes, with the Count’s underlings in cornflower blue, has the same fine historical detail as her set, and all is aglow under David Finn's lighting highlights.  While the final act still labours slightly, you’re left agog, after lasting three and half hours, that Mozart knocked it all off in just six weeks.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Prudence Upton