An audience member with no knowledge of music can evaluate an opera only by the effect it produces within him. Performed at the Metropolitan Opera on Tuesday September 22, Le Nozze de Figaro made such a lay opinion easy to form. The music engendered the sensations of mirth, suspicion, melancholy, mischief, and humor in listeners at precisely the moment called for by the dialogue. As it was an Italian libretto written from a French play, with a score produced by a German composer in 1786, translated into English, German, and Spanish for Met viewers in 2009, the music’s correspondence with the story clearly transcends both language and time. Further, the music’s compelling beauty and the plot’s eternally familiar theme of adultery and mockery of the upper crust appeal to the innate passions of humans now as they did when first performed. Figaro still makes people laugh.
In addition to the execution of Mozart’s score, the set of Figaro contributed a great deal to the nuances of Tuesday’s performance. For a student arriving at Lincoln center – with a head congested with numbered carbons, feet resentful of Figaro for dress shoe blisters, and gut expecting over three hours of high-pitched, absurdly costumed women in moody settings – the first scene was a stunning surprise. As the curtains rose, morning spilled into the theater. Soft white artificial sunlight like the illumination of an eastward facing window in open country just after sunrise flooded the stage from the left. The light brown wood of the high shelves, ladders and knickknacks filling the back wall created an invitingly rustic and elegant morning as Susanna and Figaro, clad in light and cheerful tones, fussed over marriage veils and beds on opposite ends of the stage. The pale and simple background well represented the lighthearted joy and hope of the young couple, and the lighting emphasized the initial clarity of the characters’ minds. The dark red robe of the count, the playfully light blue outfit of the young Cherubino, and the muted muddy colors of the scheming adults complicate the scene visually in reflection of the intrusion of a tightly interwoven society into the plot, agendas hidden behind false politesse.
The setting of the second act – the bedroom of the countess – stands out in the opera as a sharp collection of Figaro’s themes and its portrayal of the preoccupations of the aristocracy. To the left, a vanity emphasizes fixation with appearances. Center in the back is a bed, symbolic of sexual desire and marriage; it is built into the back wall as it is into the background of the characters’ lives. The screen to the right, acting as a shield for a variety of hidden characters, conveys the incessant concealment of oneself and one’s motives. The light, having fallen some with the day’s progress contributes to the declining coherence among the jumble of persons and lies.
Finally, after the third act takes place in a sort of hall or study, the set morphs with the transition to the fourth and final act with the most impressive staging drama of the night. The entire set rotates until a courtyard area is revealed, with the whole surface of the prior act tilted at a striking angle. The madness of the day, with the various plots to catch betrayal and mistrust in partners comes to its climax here. The lighting has greatly diminished to evening darkness, and it is not until the countess appears in sparkling white at the end that light again reappears strongly on stage, as clarity and again emerge.
Even for those without musical knowledge, Le Nozze de Figaro, as performed and staged at the Met this Tuesday, was an impressive experience.
You have made poetry with your words. Maybe you have found your calling? Great review.