The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro)

Synopsis

Count Almaviva lusts after the delicious Susanna, Figaro's bride to be. The neglected Countess pines for her husband's attentions and, as she tries to make him jealous, love and suspicion abound. Figaro must unravel the threads before he and Susanna can tie the knot. Also performed as Figaro's Wedding and Figaro!. First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786

Our Review:

1 June 2010

Much has been made of director David McVicar’s decision to update Le nozze di Figaro by half a century, apparently linking the humiliation of Count Almaviva to the fall of the Bourbons in 1830. In performance, though, the impact of this idea is merely to give us the best of both period worlds where elaborate periwigs give way to breeches and frock coats that reek of cool.

The coolest of them all is Figaro himself, as portrayed by the Uruguayan bass-baritone Erwin Schrott in a return to the role he initiated at the production’s inception. Schrott too has been updated, the dimpled lad of 2006 banished in favour of a crop-haired, buffed-up hunk, an adjustment that allows servant and master (Mariusz Kwiecien is the brooding Count) to stalk the château on equal terms.

If Schrott and Kwiecien are the two linchpins of this revival, vocally rich and physically dominant, there are troubles among the ladies that extend beyond the merely amorous. As the Countess...

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