terrifying twists
Lorenzo
da Ponte (libretto, after the comedy by Pierre-Auigustin Caron de
Beaumarchais), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (music) Le nozze di Figaro / the performance I saw was the Metropolitan
Opera live HD broadcast, October 18, 2014
Like
many an opera buffa, Mozart’s Le nozze di
Figaro is filled with would-be lovers jumping in and out of beds; late
night romantic assignations; flirtations and sexual encounters between maid(s)
and master, mistress and godson (or male servant(s), or any visiting admirer); intriguing
switches of amative attentions; startling revelations of heritage and
birthright; as well as, quite often, temporary alterations of sex—all
undertaken beneath the nose of a highly suspicious husband or another such
authoritative figure who is usually the greatest transgressor of the lot.
Il barbiere di
Siviglia
knows, Mozart’s work offers all of the above in great proliferation. Between
Count Almaviva’s (Peter Mattei) attempts to bed nearly all of his housekeepers,
and his maid Susanna’s (wonderfully elucidated by Marlis Petersen) and her
soon-to-be husband Figaro’s (Ildar Abdrazakov) attempts to get even (or in
Figaro’s case, to revenge) for the master’s unwelcome attentions of the lively “flower
of the household,” there is hardly a moment in this heady elixir of amour and
feudal abuse that isn’t jam-packed with new plot twists.
“Twist,” indeed, is the perfect word for
the constant story fluctuations, which the Saturday HD broadcast host, Renée
Fleming (who has performed in her share of Figaro
productions) characterized as “a perpetual turning of the tables.” So many
epistles have been written and posted through the pockets of Figaro that, at
one point, when cornered by the Count, he admits that he even he cannot keep
track of the would-be comings and goings of figures, as three notes of
assignation simultaneously fall from his pockets. Fortuitously, Rob Howell’s
well-oiled swing of the settings and Sir Richard Eyre’s precisely-timed
fluidity of direction keep the production moving, even if, at moments, the
audience and characters lag behind in comprehension.
Unlike the often clumsy and blundering
Almaviva (a long-living soul, or one who learns through the long-time
experiences of life), always behind his nemesis, the cherub can literally “fly,”
as he proves through his escape from the balcony window of his godmother’s
bedroom. Using the former castrati role as a tranvesti character
to perfect effect, Mozart and his librettist
require that not only every woman in the play be sexually charmed by the young
man but must attempt to make every man equally so; except for perhaps Rossini’s
Le Comte Ory, opera has never before used transvestitism to such wonderful
effects. Not only do the Countess and Susanna spend long moments in joyfully
dressing up their youthful lothario as a lovely woman whom they hope will satisfy
the sexual longings of the Count, but another of the Count’s conquests,
Barbarina hides him, when Cherubino has deserted from his military service, by
dressing him up as a provincial beauty. Time and again, the woman
turn-the-tables, so to speak, on this would-be molester by rendering him
neuter, by turning him into one of their own kind.
Still, the rapscallion Cherubino nearly
destroys the day for the penultimate “twist” of the story, wherein the
Countess, having transformed herself into Susanna through her dress (while
Susanna hiding her eager desire for Figaro’s embracement within the Countesses’
gown), prepares to receive her unrepentant husband. Cherubino’s unwanted
attentions reiterate not only the pains the Countess has had so suffer for his
husband’s philandering, but suggests what Barbarina may have to suffer later in
her life.
For
the moment, however, the day is saved, and, the final “twist” is played out in
all its grand ironic display, the Count unconsciously playing lover to his own
wife.
Los Angeles, October 19, 2014
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