Newspaper Article

A 'Figaro' That Doesn't Stand on Ceremony

Banno, Joe

2001

Overview

Mozart's \"Le Nozze di Figaro\" (\"The Marriage of Figaro\") is an opera of such elegant genius and humane wit, just the act of playing through the score can generate a glow. But when \"Figaro\" is produced with a cast of fine young singing actors, and a director willing to look below all the breezy comedy to the deeper emotional life that the composer and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte chronicle, the opera takes on an incandescence that remains long after the fourth-act curtain. Mozart based his opera on an incendiary French play by Beaumarchais, itself a sequel to an earlier play, \"The Barber of Seville.\" Giovanni Paisiello composed an opera based on \"The Barber of Seville\" around the time Mozart was writing \"Figaro,\" but of course it is Rossini's later version of \"Barber\" that has remained in the repertoire. Those who caught Washington Opera's recent production of Rossini's \"Barber\" have a rare opportunity to follow the lives of Rossini's characters as Mozart and Da Ponte thicken the plot. Simone Alberghini steers clear of making Figaro either an affable trickster who bumbles into good luck, or the face of underclass revolt. His Figaro is an overworked guy who's plain tired of Almaviva's meddlings in his life and goes about fixing things quietly and methodically. If this makes for a more unsmiling performance of the role than is sometimes the case, so be it: This is a recognizably human Figaro.

• Publisher: WP Company LLC d/b/a The Washington Post
• Subject: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) / Opera