COSI FAN TUTTE - REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

If you are going to the opera and notice that what you are about to see is directed by Dmitri Tcherniakov, tighten up your seatbelt because you may be in for a rough ride. The rough ride could be thrilling or whatever the opposite of thrilling is that will cause you to boo, metaphors aside, the production that you actually see.

I speak of the current production of Cosi Fan Tutte at the former residence of the Archbishop of Aix-en-Provence, now called the Theatre de l’Archevêché.  Cosi was the first opera to be produced at the Aix-en-Provence Festival when it opened in 1948 and there can be few people who attended that performance and attend this year’s showing but sometimes historic nostalgia is as important as actual memory.

As to the plot of Cosi, we all know that with some variations we have the beautiful sisters Fiordiligi and Dorabella who, with their maid the feisty Despina, live in a mansion in Naples overlooking the harbour.

They are deeply, madly, eternally in love with Guglielmo and Ferrando and we know that because they tell us that it is the absolute truth. The latter gentlemen feel exactly the same way about the ladies, and they are willing to put their lives or whatever to dispel any doubts about their devotion. But their friend, the cynical and wise philosopher Don Alfonso (I think that’s what he is) is willing to make a bet that all women are capable of infidelity and that is confirmed by the title of the opera.

Wanna bet? Yes, they do. Don Alfonso “sends” the men to war, and the same men disguised as Albanians are brought to the ladies’ posh residence by him. The ladies do not recognize the newcomers who woo them with passion and conviction. My impression has always been that the two beauties are very nice but not very swift. Leave to Mozart’s music to overwhelm you and suspend your disbelief.

 

The two couples near their beds. Photo Monika Ritterhaus

What does Tcherniakov give us. Forget most of the above. Two middle-aged couples are, in Tcherniakov’s words, “in a fancy villa in the forest or perhaps a chalet in the mountains.” The set shows a sitting area with an ordinary table and six chairs with two inviting bedrooms with big beds behind but let’s not quibble about that.

The two couples make use of the bedrooms during the overture and when the opera begins, we discover that they are Guglielmo and Fiordiligi, and Ferrando and Dorabella with Don Alfonso and Despina. We already saw Don Alfonso molesting, yes, sexually interfering with Despina’s anatomy, but she seemed to participate in the encounter after some resistance. We will see more of Don Alfonso as a dirty old man.

But right now, our attention is riveted toward the lovers who are past the bloom of youth and are in fact in their fifties. I take the liberty of assuming that whatever they were doing on those beautiful beds was not for the first time.     

The holiday in the forest or in the mountains takes place now and the men and women are dressed in modern clothes so there is no eighteenth or nineteenth century prudery. Guglielmo and Ferrando as the presumed Albanians of the original production appear in modern clothes with masks which they quickly take off and even Mozart’s gorgeous music is asking too much of us to suspend our disbelief. Where are those mustachioed and overdressed Albanians when you need them?

The pervert and the maid. Photo: Erika Ritterhaus

The middle-aged men and women re-discovering love and passion with a different partner and the women tasting infidelity may not have the same stigma that it did, say, 250 years ago. But Tcherniakov does not stop there. Despina with a blonde wig looks like something out of a Marx brothers’ movie but her relationship with Don Alonso may not be as consensual as we would like to think. They engage in simulated coitus in front of our eyes that is not all bad except that we do not expect the elder philosopher Don Alfonso to be such a dirty old man.

Pervert Don Alfonso kisses Ferrando and Fiordiligi on the lips quite seriously. A shotgun is introduced early in the performance and as in a Chekhov play, it is eventually used on stage.

I have spoken at great length about Tcherniakov, but the performers deserve much credit. True they are all in their fifties (except for Nicole Chevalier whose date of birth I could not find). But, even if they stumble now and then, they do superb work.  They are baritone Russell Braun as Guglielmo, soprano Agneta Eichenholz as Fiordiligi, tenor Rainer Trost as Ferrando, mezzo Claudia Mahnke as Dorabella, baritone Georg Nigl as Don Alfonso and soprano Nicole Chevalier as Despina. The Balthasar Neumann Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Thomas Hengelbrock plays Mozart’s music with incredible beauty and finesse.      

Directors pushing the envelope to produce operas in different locations with radical interpretations, especially in Europe, is nothing new. In fact, the last time Cosi was produced at the Aix-en-Provence Festival was in 2016 directed by Christophe Honoré. He set his production in a slum in a village in colonial Africa. The director was roundly booed.

This time the reaction at curtain call was mixed. There are boos no doubt but also applause of approval. I admire Tcherniakov’s work, and I would never boo his brilliant inventiveness and imagination. One can legitimately say that he may have gone too far with his inventiveness in this production but isn’t that the reason we want to see what he has in mind?

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Cosi Fan Tutte continues at the Théâtre de l'Archevêché until July 21, 2023 in Aix-en-Provence, France.  http://festival-aix.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor- Culture of The Greek Press. This review appears in the newspaper

THE THREEPENNY OPERA – REVIEW OF 2023 AIX-EN-PROVENCE FESTIVAL PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas

The Aix-en-Provence Festival is in its 75^th year and from the 4^th to the 24^th of July 2023 the gorgeous medieval city in the south of France becomes a mecca of cultural activities from productions of opera, ballet, concerts, and lectures to keep one occupied almost constantly.

The Festival opened on July 4 with a new production of The Threepenny Opera that featured some amazing features. It is done in French in a new translation by Alexandre Pateau in an adaptation by German man of the theater Thomas Ostermeier who also directed the production. L’opéra de quat’sous (four sous) is the French title of Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill’s 1928 collaboration. The production is supposed to be faithful to the 1928 text with the addition of a new song, “Pauv’ Madam Peachum” with text by Yvette Guilbert, adapted by Pateau.

In an innovative step, the production uses actors from the Comédie-Française instead of conventional opera singers, and Le balcon, a band of about a dozen musicians playing a variety of instruments under the direction of Maxime Pascal.  

Most people know something about The Threepenny Opera. It is a product of the moral and financial morass of the 1920s Weimar Republic Berlin. It is not an opera in the conventional sense, of course, but a parody that attacks private property, capitalism, morality, the bourgeois, the justice system and gives a frightful portrait of life in the slums of London. Crime, corruption, prostitution are the milieu of the work. It is based to some extent on John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera.

Ostermeier takes an idiosyncratic approach to the opera by producing it partly as a concert version and partly as a fully performed work. This is no doubt a bow to the theory of epic theatre. More about that in a minute.  When the performance begins, we see four microphones prominently displayed on the stage.  Claina Clavaron sings “The Ballad of Mack the Knife” about the demi-monde of the opera and the anti-hero and preeminent criminal Macheath. otherwise known as Mac the Knife in a style resembling a 1920’s cabaret performance. 

Scene from Threepenny Opera. Photo © Jean-Louis Fernandez

From then on, the singing and the dialogue part of the opera will be performed on the microphone or by the characters interacting in the usual way in the theatre. The choice to have actors speak on the microphone rather than interact with the other characters in the scene is the choice of director Ostermeier. This is no doubt an attempt at giving us the then nascent idea of Brecht known as epic theatre, an attempt to treat a play as if it were the recitation of an epic poem rather than an attempt at realistic representation. This is not the place for an essay on epic theater but that idea and Brecht’s dedication to Marxism were not fully developed in 1928.

The Threepenny Opera is, despite its name, a play with songs and therefore has a lot of dialogue between sung numbers. The actors of the Comedie-Francaise spoke it, in various speeds as required by the text. Those without a facility for French dialogue at a certain speed (like moi) could not read the English surtitles with any appreciable speed. But I am sure there were few such types.

After the Ballad we get down to business in what is supposed to be a London slum but there is no indication of that. We start with the disgusting Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum (Christian Hecq), a portly gentleman who is the boss of the beggars. He trains and outfits them at their cost and collects 50% of their “earnings.” This may be the original franchise method of doing business. Peachum has a “lovely” wife and partner called Celia (Veronique Vella). They have a pretty daughter called Polly (Marie Oppert) who, horrors, wants to marry some low-life and yes, it is Macheath himself played by a suave Birane Ba.

In the next scene we attend the nuptials of the happy couple with a collection of criminals and Chief of Police Brown (Benjamin Lavernhe). What follows is a scene of slapstick comedy with pies (cake really) thrown at people in a scene reminiscent of The Three Stooges. In true epic theatre style, the actors get down on their knees and clean up the mess made by the cakes when the party is over.

The production continues in the same style with Peachum’s desire to have Macheath arrested and Brown protecting him. They were army buddies after all. There is treachery, bribery, and ballads like the one about sexual obsession, melodrama, the song of Solomon and others.   

The sets by Magda Willi are minimal with no hint of London slums. The action takes place during the coronation of a queen, and you can decide a more precise chronology for that but don’t bother. There are video projections by Sebastien Dupouey of geometric figures and black and white photographs and film clips but I could not make head or tails of them. Florence von Gerkan’s costumes were modern but colourful to portray some of the low-lives and hookers of the underworld.

The actors of the Comédie-Française performed with assurance and aplomb from slapstick comedy to more serious scenes and especially comic ones of satire, parody and ridicule of society as well as betrayal, arrest and almost execution of Macheath. In case you forgot the end of the opera, rest at ease. Macheath is pardoned by the newly crowned queen and made a lord.

There are some lyrical songs and the assorted musicians of Pascal’s Le Balcon performed with gusto.

The Threepenny Opera has gained a sure-footed niche in modern culture with some of the songs like The Ballad of Mack the Knife that have gained honourable status. The work has posed difficulties in classification. There is no need. Opera houses and theatres are producing it on a regular basis, and no one should care about classification.

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The Threepenny Opera (L’opera de quat’sous) by Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill opened on July 4 and will be performed on different dates until July 24, 2023, at the Théâtre de l’Archevêché, Aix-en-Provence, France. www.festival-aix.com/

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press. This review appears in the newspaper

DON GIOVANNI – REVIEW OF LIVE TRANSMISSION OF 2023 MET PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

New York’s Metropolitan Opera has brought its stunning new production of Don Giovanni to a theatre near millions of people around the world who could otherwise not imagine seeing it. There are many things one can say about Ivo van Hove’s vision of the opera. Idiosyncratic, perhaps eccentric, maybe unorthodox, highly imaginative, thought-provoking, even controversial. You can choose other descriptions but the conclusion should be that this is an extraordinary production of a great opera.

It is a modern dress production but the suits and ordinary dresses worn by the cast with few exceptions are just the beginning. The pretty country girl Zerlina and the bumpkin Masetto that she is about to marry are dressed in ordinary clothes with no indication of class difference between them and the aristocratic Don Giovanni and the other upper crust members.

The set goes further in capturing van Hove’s bleak view. Several stark concrete buildings form a cul-de sac. There are openings for doors and windows but they are just gaping holes. The set is rotated at some points but there are no interior scenes and no indication of wealth or views of the countryside. Simple concrete.

What kind of Don Giovanni do we get? I think the best way to describe him is as a relative of Donald Trump. He is a slimy lecher who considers women as sex objects to be had and discarded. You can forget any notions of the romantic lover. He is no doubt a talented seducer with money and status to fool most women but they represent the proverbial notches on the headboard of his bed and are not worthy of more consideration. 

A scene from Mozart's "Don Giovanni" Photo: Karen Almond / Met Opera

Take the opening scene where the beautiful Donna Anna (Federica Lombardi) is grabbing Don Giovanni as he tries to get away from her room where they had sex. She wants to know who he is and he refuses to identify himself. We see how he operates when he tries to seduce the innocent Zerlina, a country girl who is about to get married. She falls for his devilish lies. Did he pull the same stunt on Donna Anna and she fell in love with him? Now that he had his “notch” he is no longer interested.

The same story is seen in his relationship with Donna Elvira (Ana Maria Martinez). She is a previous victim looking for him, not to punish him, but to get him back. This Donna Elvira is constructed terrifically by van Hove and sung and acted superbly by Martinez. She is not a young woman but one that is almost ready to be put on the proverbial shelf and there is desperation on her search for her lost and perhaps last love. This Donna Elvira is much more credible than an irate woman looking for revenge.

When Leporello (Adam Plachetka) reads out the catalogue of Don Giovanni’s “conquests” to Donna Elvira, it is in fact a list of victims who believed his grotesque lies and served his momentary sexual lust before being discarded like a used napkin.

Near the end of the opera, Donna Anna tells her patient and loving fiancée Don Ottavio (Ben Bliss) that she will postpone their wedding for a year. I have thought that this postponement is prompted by her love of Don Giovanni. In this production she shows genuine affection for Don Ottavio and it may be another twist by van Hove.

The singing is outstanding. Baritone Peter Mattei, wearing a black suit, white shirt and black tie, delivers a stunningly sung Trumpian scumbag of a Don Giovanni. He just loves women, he tells us. Bass-baritone Adam Plachetka is a superb Leporello, long-suffering with sparks of decency but unable to do much. In the end I thought he would walk off with Donna Elvira bur servants don’t get aristocratic women.

Federica Lombardi as Donna Anna is gorgeous in her singing and acting. We can decide for ourselves the motivations of the Commendatore’s (Alexander Tsymbalyuk) daughter but we can only heap praise on Lombardi for her silk voice and marvellous performance.

Martinez’s Donna Elvira who can be seen as a woman raging with ire and passion is here a lady in pain looking for a lost, and as I said, perhaps, last love. Martinez has been made to look the part and her performance is simply stellar.

Soprano Ying Fang’s Zerlina is very pretty, sings beautifully, is ambitious but not very bright. We love her regardless and we applaud her when she persuades the oafish Masetto of Alfred Walker that she still loves him even though she bolted almost from the altar. Just wonderful.

A simply marvellous production.

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Don Giovanni by W. A. Mozart was shown Live in HD from the Metropolitan Opera on May 20 and will be rebroadcast on June 10, 2023 at various Cineplex theatres.  For more information: www.cineplex.com/events

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press

TOSCA – REVIEW OF 2023 COC REVIVAL OF PAUL CURRAN PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas 

The Canadian Opera Company opens an amazing production of Puccini’s Tosca that together with Macbeth wraps up the current season. This is the third revival of Paul Curran’s 2008 production. It has earned its staying power and garnered a standing ovation.

Any production of Tosca requires three outstanding singers: a tenor for the hero Mario Cavaradossi, a soprano for the heroine Flora Tosca and a baritone for the despicable Baron Scarpia. There are other roles who need to entertain us such as the Sacristan who is a comic character and needs to sing, make gestures and facial grimaces to get some laughs and bass Donato di Stefano does a fine job..

There is also the desperate Angelotti of bass baritone Christian Pursell and the lovely tones of the Shepherd Boy sung by Olivia Pady from the Canadian Children’s Opera Company. If you ever wondered what a shepherd is doing in the middle of a seriously built-up area of Rome in the Castel Sant’Angelo, wonder no more. The area around the castle was not built at all around 1800, the time of the opera, and there were flocks of sheep around there.

 

Keri Alkema as Tosca and Stefano La Colla as Cavaradossi. Photo: Michael Cooper

Let me praise the singers. Tenor Stefano La Colla in his debut with the COC sang a superb Cavaradossi that was a thrill to listen to. After the insolence and comic business of the Sacristan, he breaks out with “Recondita armonia” and lets out nothing less than vocal pyrotechnics. He waxes romantic and alluring as the jealous Tosca accuses him of infidelity. He reaches for the stars when he sings Vittoria and ends with the luminous “E lucevan le stelle.”

American soprano Keri Alkema is reprising her 2017 performance as Tosca and gives a superb performance. It is a role that makes serious demands on the soprano. She starts as the jealous, suspicious and histrionic woman who loves Cavaradossi. In a nice touch, she will not let him kiss her in front of the Madonna. In the second act Alkema/Tosca meets the challenge of psychological torture leading to betrayal as Scarpia forces her to disclose the whereabouts of the escaped Angelotti.   

She is driven to the edge of despair and finds the strength and vocal beauty in “Vissi d’arte” to sing about living for  art and beauty. A gorgeous rendition. Then comes the attempted rape, the horror and the triumphant stabbing of the creep. Scarpia pleads for help and as he is dying, Tosca leans over him and says “Die with my curse! Die..die..die!” Alkema delivers these words almost matter-of-factly. I think they should contain venomous, demonic triumph as she gets even with him. It is the only disappointing moment in her performance.

Scottish baritone Roland Wood as Scarpia encapsulates lust, evil, torture and deceit. He was so convincing that some people booed him during curtain call, confusing the singer-actor with the character that he portrayed. Marvelous performance.

Curran and Set and Costume Designer Curran opt for an effective production eschewing Zeffirellian excesses. The set from the church scene to Scarpia’s office to the roof of the Sant’Angelo castle are appropriate without being ostentatious. The COC Orchestra is conducted by Giuliano Carella.   

The production does have an alternate Tosca sung by Sinead Campbell-Wallace and a Shepherd Boy sung by Zoya Avramova.

This is a truly outstanding production that does credit to the COC. In the words of Oliver “More, please.”

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Tosca by Giacomo Puccini opened on May 5 and will be performed eight times until May 27, 2023, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor – Culture of The Greek Press.

MACBETH – REVIEW OF CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY 2023 PRODUCTION

 Reviewed by James Karas 

Verdi’s Macbeth was last produced by the Canadian Opera Company in 2005 in its final season at the unmourned and unmissed Hummingbird Centre. The production left mixed memories but the farewell to the Hummingbird was sheer joy. The COC now has a marvellous new production of the opera with an impressive cast directed by David McVicar and under the baton of Speranza Scappucci.

Verdi famously thought that Macbeth had three roles: Lady Macbeth, Macbeth and the Chorus. You may disagree but he was not far wrong. I will pay homage to them in reverse order. The COC Chorus is a star in in the production. From the The Witches’ Chorus, to “Schiude, inferno” to “Patria oppressa” and the final rousing chorus they sing with beautiful lyricism, strength and triumphal sound. An outstanding Chorus at its best.

A scene from the COC’s production of 

Macbeth, 2023, photo: Michael Cooper

American baritone Quinn Kelsey sang an impressive Macbeth. We follow him from his first surprising encounter with the witches to his reluctant conversion into a murderer under the influence of his wife, to his transformation into an evil person and his final downfall.  Macbeth never loses his humanity completely and I am ready to blame his wife regardless of his complicity and actions. In a stunning performance Kelsey shows the evil that overtakes Macbeth but also his innate reluctance to be consumed. He is consumed but his seeing Banquo’s ghost and fainting during the banquet scene show that there is another side to Macbeth. His vocal performance is superb as he negotiates through his emotional turmoil from victorious general, to ambitious and arrogant murderer and finally to a defeated human being.   

Reviewing Bulgarian soprano Alexandrina Pendatchanska’s performance as Lady Macbeth poses a problem. We were advised that she was indisposed and we are honour-bound to respect and overlook any vocal issues. I don’t think we were short-changed because Pendatchanska did superb work in delivering Lady Macbeth’s vocal flourishes and she was convincing in the Mad Scene and in her display of ambition. The rest must be overlooked.

Turkish bass Onay Kose sang a sonorous Banquo, Macbeth’s friend who is murdered but appears at Macbeth’s celebratory dinner after the killing of the legitimate king. Canadian tenor Matthew Cairns as Macduff delivers “Ah la paterna mano” one of the most affecting arias on learning of the massacre of his wife and children.

David McVicar, one of the  best directors in the business, directs this coproduction with the Chicago Lyric Opera. The scene opens in an abandoned and crumbling church where the witches are gathered. With some changes in detail the run-down church serves as the focal point of the production.

With Set Designer John Macfarlane and Costume Designer Moritz Junge, McVicar delivers a dark, bleak, menacing and horrific atmosphere. The bleakness of the world of Scotland is not relieved by anything until the last scene when the chorus sings praise to the new king and gives thanks to God for their deliverance from evil.

Speranza Scappucci conducted the COC Orchestra at a brisk and superb pace.

This is a marvelous production and one that is worth seeing.

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Macbeth by Giuseppe Verdi is being performed seven times on various dates until May 20, 2023, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. www.coc.ca

James Karas is the Senior Editor - Culture of The Greek Press.

THE RESURRECTION – REVIEW OF OPERA ATELIER 2023 PRODUCTION OF HANDEL’S ORATORIO

Reviewed by James Karas

Opera Atelier is back or should we say resurrected after several years’ enforced sojourn in the Elysian Fields where good people are sent to rest. It has produced George Frederick Handel’s’ oratorio The Resurrection to coincide with the celebration of Easter and it is a vocal and visual delight.

The Resurrection was Handel’s first sacred oratorio and he composed it while in Rome to a libretto by Carlo Capece. He was 23 years old. It was performed fittingly enough on Easter Sunday and Monday in 1708 but not in a church. Even more fittingly perhaps it was performed in the palace of a Marquess and, worse, the role of Mary Magdalen was sung by a female soprano. Both aspects spoke of the theatricality of the piece but, women were not permitted to sing on the stage in Rome at the time and perhaps out of an abundance of caution she was replaced by a castrato for the second performance.

Marshall Pynkoski and Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg, the Co-artistic Directors of Opera Atelier have given us a beautifully sung and finely staged production of the oratorio at the well-appointed Koerner Hall, Toronto. for only three perfectly timed performances: Holy Thursday and Saturday and Easter Sunday.

The resurrection tells the story of the events after Christ’s crucifixion, in other words on Saturday after His burial while He is in the tomb and on Easter Sunday when he rises from the dead. The oratorio consists of  confrontations, lamentations and celebrations. The confrontations are with  the evil Lucifer (bass Douglas Williams) who is celebrating his victory over the death of Christ but the Angel (Carla Huhtanen) fights back. Mary Magdalen (soprano Meghan Lindsay) and Mary Cleophas (mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy) mourn the death of the Lord but are comforted by Saint John (tenor Colin Ainsworth)  who assures them that Christ will rise.

 

Artists of Atelier Baller. Photo: Bruce Zinger

The oratorio ends of course with the discovery of the empty tomb by the two Marys and the celebration of the triumph of our Lord over death and over Lucifer.

With Choreographer Jeannette Lajeunesse Zingg   and the Atelier Ballet present, we are guaranteed liberal but judicious and gorgeous use of dancing. The twelve dancers (including Jeannette) form the army of Angels who confront Lucifer and demand that the gates of Avernus (Hades or Hell) be opened to let the radiance of God dispel the stygian darkness. The dancers appear regularly throughout the production, adding colour and variety. Splendid choreography and dancing.

The set consists of two large and ostentatious bronze stands or lecterns on each side of the stage and two staircases leading to an apex. That is where the Angel will be seen. Centre stage there is a curtained off area where we will see the body of the buried Christ and later the empty one. Set Designer Gerard Gauci has done a brilliant job and he may have received inspiration from the set in the original production in the palazzo which is reputed to have been lavish.

Soprano Carla Huhtanen sings the fearless Angel that stands up to the bombastic Lucifer. Dressed in white with a gold tiara, Huhtanen sings beautifully and defends the glory of the Lord with vigour

Bass Douglas Williams has the juicy role of the pompous and blustering Lucifer. With unruly hair and wearing a black t-shirt, he runs and struts around the stage thinking that he is victorious because Jesus is dead and buried and he is the boss.

Much of the oratorio is taken up with the lamentations of Mary Magdalene and Mary Cleophas. The lineage of the latter is disputable but I choose to believe that she was the wife of the brother of Joseph, the Virgin’s husband. That makes Mary Cleophas Christ’s aunt and the mother of Christ’s alleged “brothers” leaving his mother Mary a virgin. In the libretto Mary Cleophas is referred to simply as Cleophas.

But I digress. Soprano Megan Lindsay and mezzo-soprano Allyson McHardy had the the toughest roles and had to sing the emotionally-draining lamentations. There can be no greater depth of grief than for the torture and death of the Saviour. They recall that even while on the cross when He asked for a drink He was given vinegar. It was that type of emotional level that the two singers had to express and they did. Lindsay has a superb, expressive voice. McHardy has a rich mezzo instrument that is capable of some marvelously low notes.

The two-dozen players of the Tafelmusik Orchestra were conducted by David Fallis and they played Handel’s music superbly.

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The Resurrection by  George Frederick Handel  was performed three times on April 6 -9 2023 at Koerner Hall in the TELUS Centre for Performance and Learning 273 Bloor Street West, Toronto.

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO – REVIEW OF 2023 CANADIAN OPERA COMPANY PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

The Canadian Opera Company has chosen to revive its 2016 production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro that was directed by Claus Guth for its 2023 opener. No one doubts Guth’s intelligence and brilliance as an opera director and even a cursory view of his career reveals a man who has directed many productions at the top tier of opera houses.

The current revival was marvelously sung but it has so many incomprehensible, annoying and pretentious angles that they almost succeeded in wrecking one of the best comic operas in the repertoire. Mozart and the singers fought back fiercely and the evening went well despite Guth’s ideas and intentions whatever they might be.

Let’s look at the positive aspects of the production that make it worth seeing and received enthusiastic approval from the audience. In no particular order, I heap praise on soprano Lauren Fagan on her mainstage debut at the COC. As Countess Almaviva, she sang with beauty and passion in spite of being mauled by Cherubim (stay tuned) during her singing. She sang “Dove Sono” with a gorgeous vibrato teeming with emotion.

Soprano Andrea Carroll as Susanna, Figaro’s spunky fiancée and the Countess’s maid showed vocal talent and comic ability as she tried to survive the Count’s and Cherubino’s lust. As with almost everyone else in the cast, she had to act with the serious if not deadly constraints put upon her by Guth.

Bass-baritone Luca Pisaroni as Figaro was dressed almost identically with the aristocratic Count Almaviva sung by bass-baritone Gordon Bintner. They sang with lively sonority. Pisaroni has a lot of comic parts to do but he had to settle for the few opportunities allowed him by the director. Bintner sounded authoritarian in voice and manner until he was brought to the marvelous scene of grace where he asked his wife to pardon him for his unfounded suspicions and misconduct.

The hormone-driven Cherubino can be hilarious but in this production, he was amusing and vocally highly adept. He is permanently sexually aroused and Guth allows him to paw and maul the Countess, Susanna and Barbarina (Mireille Asselin) to the point of almost simulated coitus. I am not exaggerating. We see him on top of the Countess and Suzanna.  

Luca Pisaroni as Figaro (centre) and Andrea Carroll as Susanna in the
Canadian Opera Company’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, 2023,
Photo: Michael Cooper

Toronto veteran bass Robert Pomakov’s Dr. Bartolo was right on the mark with his singing and comic business and with Megan Latham’s Marcellina they made the perfect pair.

Guth’s helpful comments from the 2011 staging of this production are noteworthy. He stated that in Figaro “Mozart not only allows all kinds of intense human passions but also portrays how they can get out of control and escalate to extremes.”  He further pointed out that he wanted “to follow the characters into their darkest psychological depths.” We may have enjoyed the production a lot better if he kept in mind that this is a comic opera that does indeed deal with love, manipulation, jealousy, mistaken identity and in the end resolution and a happy ending.

Let’s take Guth’s invented, silent character, Cherubim (Uli Kirsch). He is dressed the same way as Cherubino except for the angel’s wings on his back. He appears at the beginning of the opera when he jumps on the stage through a window and what appears at first as a curiosity becomes increasingly more annoying as he drops in with frightful regularity ad nauseum. I have no idea what he is supposed to do or represent. He jumps on the Count’s shoulders, interferes with what people are doing and never fails to be a nuisance that should have been kept in Guth’s imagination instead of being foisted on us. He is invisible to the rest of the cast and I wish he would have done us the same favour.

When it comes to human passion, Cherubino and the Count are believers and practitioners of sexual assault as they grab women in Trumpesque fashion to the point where abuse is the mildest term one can use. The Count garbs his distraught wife so forcefully that she slaps him. None of the extent of sexual abuse shown by Guth exists in the opera. This may be descending into the psychological depth of the characters but all you are doing is removing the comedy of the opera. In short, the singers deliver solid singing. For the rest they have millstones around their necks and with or without a Cherubim they manage to erase the fun of The Marriage of Figaro and as for the darkest psychological depths, I will take a pass.

The set  by Christian Schmidt consists of a large stairwell with an open space at the bottom. That is supposed to be Figaro and Susanna’s bedroom and he usually measures a place for their bed, There is no measuring in this production except for a ridiculous gesture by Figaro. In the later part of the opera the stairs are removed and the action takes place in a bare space with  grey walls and no furniture at all.

The costumes by Schmidt are all aggressively modern black and white. The cast could pass for puritans. 

The music by is deliciously played by the COC Orchestra conducted by Harry Bicket.

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The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart opened on January 27 and will be performed a total of eight times until February 18, 2023, at the Four Seasons Centre for the Performing Arts, 145 Queen Street West, Toronto, Ontario. Tel:  416-363-6671. www.coc.ca