Metropolitan Opera. Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro. February 19, 2020.

Metropolitan Opera at Lincoln Center.  Orchestra (Seat J27, $25).

Story.  Figaro and Susanna are servants of Count and Countess Almaviva.  The Count has designs on Susanna, and Marcellina has loaned money to Figaro which compells for him to marry her in case of default.  Cherubino is a young man enamored with every woman he meets.  The story is basically a romantic comedy: Figaro and Susanna foil the Count’s plans; the Countess wins back the Count; Marcellina discovers she is the mother of Figaro.

Conductor – Cornelius Meister.  Figaro – Adam Plachetka, Susanna – Hanna-Elisabeth Muller, Cherubino – Marianne Crebassa, Count Almaviva – Etienne Dupuis, Countess Almaviva – Amanda Woodbury, Dr. Bartolo – Maurizio Muraro, Marcellina – MaryAnn McCormick.

For this season this was my first successful bid for Rush Tickets, in 3 or 4 tries.  Either my typing has slowed considerably, or the opera is getting more popular.  Probably a combination of both factors, as I notice better attendance at the performances I have been to this season.  The current set was introduced in the 2014-15 season, and tonight was our first encounter with it.  I still have a vague recollection of what the set we saw.

The other somewhat surprising fact is that this was the first time we saw the opera since I started this blog; I thought I was familiar with both the story and the music; again, probably because the story – at least the basics – is easy to get, and many of the tunes are immensely singable, and popular.  The Overture opens many orchestral concerts, attested by the many entries in this blog.

The curtain was already up before the performance began.  The set is best described as three ornately-designed cylinders.  For the first two Acts the large cylinders in the middle sits on a platform which rotates to show (i) the servants’ bedroom; (ii) the Countess’s bedroom; and (iii) a banquet hall.  For Act IV one of the bedrooms was converted into a garden.  The two small cylinders are mainly thoroughfares people walk through to get from one place to another.  There seemed to be a lot of attention to details, but a simple concept nonetheless.  Fine with me.

Servants were milling around in the Countess's bedroom before Act III began.  The "three cylinders" of the set.

The Playbill describes the setting as “A manor house near Seville, the 1930s.”  The opera premiered in 1786, so the setting was moved forward 150 years or so.  Other than the costumes, things probably didn’t change all that much.  The purist would say the style of the furniture is also different, my argument was there was no attempt to generate a realistic setting anyway – otherwise something would have been done about these cylinders.  One problem though: the feudal society where elites “owned” other people didn’t exist in the 1930s (after many revolutions, no doubt), so the class distinction feel a little contrived.

One very pleasant surprise: I found the story quite funny.  I tend to groan more often than chuckle when it comes to opera buffa.  While the details of the story may not withstand close scrutiny, the general outline is easy enough to follow.  Class distinction today is not as pronounced today as it was (even the 1930s), so I probably missed all the subtleties the story makes fun of that aspect.  Credit must be given to the artists who generally acted well.  As a side remark, they all looked credible in their roles.  The names are all new to me, with the exception of Maurizio Muraro (who played Dr. Bartolo), whom I saw in 2012 in Paris (I suspect the connection was probably confusion on my part).  Crebassa as Cherubino was a standout; her gestures and movements added a lot to the comedic aspects of the story.

A consequence of concentrating on acting maybe the neglect of the singing.  We had never sit this close to the stage before, but we found the singing a bit weak.  My first thought was to attribute to the acoustics at our seat, which I “confirmed” after listening to Figaro’s “Non piu andrai” (didn’t hear any sarcasm as suggested in Playbill).  However, when Cherubino stood still and did “Voi che sapete” I realized that acoustics wasn’t the issue at all; it was well-delivered probably because she wasn’t wandering around.  Most singers eventually acquitted himself/herself; the one exception is Plachetka as Figaro, he generally came across as weak.

From left: Basilio (lawyer), Curzio (?), Bartolo, Marcellina, Countess (dressed as Susanna), Figaro, Maestro Meister, Susanna (dressed as Countess), Count, Cherubino, Barbarina, and Antonio (gardener).  The garden scene.

The music is quite complex.  Mozart put in many ensemble singing ranging from simple duets to complex tunes with nine (or eleven, I couldn’t tell) singers.  And there are some tunes that evolve from simple ideas to complex emotions.

Driving into New York during the winter time is easy, and we had no trouble finding parking tonight.  The entrance to the Turnpike coming out of Lincoln Tunnel was closed, and we circled around a few times before we finally got our orientation straight.