STAGE REVIEW: THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO

 A scene from The Marriage of Figaro.

Flesh class-ical

By Ed Rampell

The Overture to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1786 masterpiece, The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), is among the most popular in opera, while the glorious music overall is among the best in the entire operatic and classical canon. Wearing an open black shirt and his white hair flying, maestro James Conlon went all Lenny Bernstein exuberantlyconducting The Marriage of Figaro with flair, from first to final note.

It’s interesting to see The Marriage of Figaro this season with its cornucopia of Figaro-themed productions based on Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais’ original 18^thcentury plays, onstage at not only the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, but at A Noise Within’s theater. I had just seen the latter’s rather freewheeling version of Figaro, which is basically the same story as The Marriage of Figaro sans Mozart’s sublime score, so this made it easier for me to follow the action.

As the lascivious, devious Count Almaviva’s (bass-baritone Ryan McKinny) servants, Figaro (bass-baritone Roberto Tagliavini) and Susanna (soprano Pretty Yende), prepare for their nuptials the newlyweds-to-be must contend with aristocracy’s despicable droit du seigneur. This ancient feudal law allowed the lord to deflower proletarianbrides before they consummated their weddings with their commoner husbands. So the ever resourceful Figaro and Susanna must scheme to thwart their “master’s” marital rape of the bewitching bride-to-be.

At the same time, the aristocrat’s scorned, forlorn wife, Countess Almaviva (soprano Guanqun Yu), seeks to reign in her adulterous husband’s serial philandering and to be reunited with him. (As depicted in Rossini’s 1816 The Barber of Seville, which LA Op presented earlier this season, the fickle Count Almaviva had ardently pursued Rosina to make her his Countess, but years later, when Marriage takes place, he has become bored by his now-downcast wife.)

As the plot thickens the randy cross-dressing male Cherubino (mezzo-soprano Renee Rapier), his adolescent hormones raging out of control, lusts for Rosina, Susanna and Barbarina (portrayed at the premiere by soprano So Young Park and on April 9 & 12 by soprano Vanessa Becerra). Cherubino, who dresses up in women’s clothing, becomes a soldier who’d prefer by far to make love, not war. Further complicating matters, Marcellina (mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer) has her own designs on Figaro, and it is one of the opera’s biggest surprises when we find out why she really loves Figaro. Bass Kristinn Sigmundsson, who recently played Don Basilio (depicted here by tenor Robert Brubaker) in The Barber of Seville, portrays The Marriage of Figaro's Doctor Bartolo with the same comic panache he displayed in The Barber of Seville.

In other words, this opera is mostly about sex. Although the Count and lowly servant have a war of wits, pitting the patrician against the plebian, Mozart mostly plays this class struggle for laughs. There are also lots of war-between-the-sexes jokes and jibes.

However, as the issue of diversity and show biz has been much in the news of late, it’s worth noting that what’s called “non-traditional casting” actually enhances this production. The aptly named Pretty Yende is black, which adds another layer (no pun intended) to the cum-plexity of the plot, wherein the aristo seeks to assert his reprehensible droit du seigneur. The casting of an African woman as Susanna is redolent and reminiscent of those loathsome slave masters who coerced their female “chattel” to have sex with them at Southern plantations. While the casting of Yu as the Countess may be a reference to how some Westerners view Asian women as “trophy” wives and/or lovers (although Yu’s Rosina is no stereotypical lotus blossom).

The casting of these talented non-white women in roles portrayed since the 18^th century by mostly European performers demonstrates what “affirmative action” really is in action: opening up the doors so individuals possessing god-given gifts can use them to their fullest expression. And in doing so, enriching the overall theatergoing experience, while giving jobs to deserving artists and others. From each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs.

Yu’s rendition of the Countess’ arias “Porgi amor” (“Love, thou holy purest impulse”) and “Dovo sono” (“They are over”) are as lovely as anything a Westerner could warble, and we are all the better for it when inclusion, rather than exclusion, is the watchword of the day, on- and offstage.

This is also true for the transgender role playing. Rapier’s rendition of the (purportedly) male Cherubino’s aria “Voi che sapete” (“What is this feeling?”) about adolescent love is utterly beguiling and charming. Sigmundsson’s mock malevolent interpretation of the aria, “La vendetta, oh, la vendetta” (“Revenge, oh, sweet revenge”) is likewise excellent.

As I wrote circa 2010 when LA Opera last presented The Marriage of Figaro, Ian Judge again deftly directs the players, but scenery designer Tim Goodchild’s humdrum sets still only come alive in the gorgeous garden scene, with its full moon -- although I don’t quite understand how chandeliers could be suspended outdoors. (Unfortunately, we are beset by the same sets - apparently Goodchild didn’t read my review. Bad child!) And once again this production also unnecessarily inserts modern references, such as telephones and flashlights, into the 18^th century milieu, which only serve to distract from what is otherwise a period piece. These intrusions do not enhance the work but are only 20^th century distractions that really don’t belong here. But these are mere quibbles. The choreography by Sergio Trujillo and Chad Everett Allen, plus chorus directed by Grant Gershon, however, are all grand.

The production clocked in at three and a half hours-plus. For that period of time one is transported from Earth to Planet Mozart. Wolfgang’s vision of love reigning supreme is a sublime splendor, with music to match. A splendid time was had by all.


The Marriage of Figaro runs through April 12 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213-972-8001; www.laopera.com.

 

 

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STAGE REVIEW: THE BARBER OF SEVILLE

Rosina (Elisabeth DeShong) in The Barber of Seville. Photo Credit: Craig T. Mathew.

 

 

Sum it up to style

By Ed Rampell

Daily existence is full of a cornucopia of soul-sapping vexations marring our felicity. They run the gamut, dammit -- from eternal, infernal traffic jams to pesky bill collectors to life threatening plagues to wars to global warming, ad nauseam. But LA Opera’s production of Gioachino Rossini’s The Barber of Seville is one of those things that can make you feel glad to be alive, rendering those ceaseless slings and arrows of our outrageous misfortunes bearable and even making living a worthwhile undertaking.

Debuting in Rome in 1816, The Barber of Seville has become one of the most performed (it last graced the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion’s stage in 2009), best loved opera’s ever. There are several reasons why, but Rossini’s music certainly has pride of place. The score is bubbly, buoyant, vibrant, frothy.

In addition, James Conlon is so animated. His baton seems like more of a magic wand, conjuring Rossini’s intoxicating, enchanting score out of the strings, woodwinds, fortepiano, brass and percussion instruments like a symphonic sorcerer.

Another reason for The Barber of Seville's perennial popularity is its plot - this comedy is, after all, an ebullient romance. As the maid Berta (mezzo-soprano Lucy Schaufer) sings: “What on earth is all this love which makes everyone go mad?” (Or, as Freddie Mercury put it 163 years later: that “Crazy little thing called love”.) Of course, there is Count Almaviva’s (tenor Rene Barbera) light-hearted, lusty pursuit of Rosina (mezzo-soprano Elizabeth DeShong), which provides the comical backbone for this opera that adapts the first of the trilogy of 18^th century plays by French playwright Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais about the title character.

However, in this libretto by Cesare Sterbini, there is no greater love than the one the eponymous haircutter, Figaro (Moscow-born baritone Rodion Pogossov), has for himself. This supremely self-confident beautician apparently has a higher quotient of self-esteem than The Donald does. In his rapidly sung “Largo al factotum” aria, basking in the beauty of (who else?) himself, the highly self-regarding, self-ballyhooing barber sings the name of his true love - “Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!” - don’tchaknow? Pogossov is a hoot (and a holler) in the title role: Not even Kryptonite could stop this Muscovite.

Another outstanding thing about this LA Opera and Emilio Sagi production is that it slyly uses a cinematic technique rarely seen onscreen in movies such as 1939’s The Wizard of Oz. Spanish scenic designer Llorenc Corbella, Argentine costume designer Renata Schussheim, Spanish lighting designer Eduardo Bravo and American director Trevore Ross have quite cleverly collaborated to visualize the emergence of love onstage.

There are other shrewd stage effects -- as in LA Op’s 2009 production there is a likewise sharp-witted visualization of the “slander” concocted by Rosina’s thwarted, would-be lover, Doctor Bartolo (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli, who alternates in the role on March 22 with bass-baritone Philip Cokorinos, who performed the role at the Dorothy Chandler in 2009) and Don Basilio, portrayed with great comic panache by the crowd pleasing Icelandic bass, Kristinn Sigmundsson. His hulking presence and humorous depiction added to the show’s general merriment, even as Basilio and his partner in crime, Bartolo, conspired to make Almaviva sing a la Simon and Garfunkel: “I get slandered, libeled, I hear words I never heard in the bible” as he tries to keep Rosina satisfied.

Kudos to the entire cast and crew, including chorus director Grant Gershon and Spanish choreographer Nuria Castejon.

The Barber of Seville runs through March 22 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave., Los Angeles. For more info: 213-972-8001; Barber.

 

 

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THEATER REVIEW: CINDERELLA



Cinderella (Kate Lindsay) in Cinderella.

 Fairytale Marx a spot

By Ed Rampell

This L.A. Opera production of Gioachino Rossini’s Cinderella (La Cenerentola) is nothing short of a sheer delight. It ranks amongst the most enchanting of all of the operas I’ve ever seen. The music, conducted by James Conlon, is frothy, as lighthearted as the Wagnerian Flying Dutchman’s score and story are full of sturm und drang. Joan Guillen’s sets are inventive, while his costuming, along with the stellar cast -- including a charming quintet of mice -- are exceedingly magical. Mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey fits the bill perfectly in the title role (Georgian mezzo-soprano Ketevan Kemoklidze plays Cinderella during the April performances) and Italian bass-baritone Vito Priante as Dandini steals scenes with a kleptomaniac’s gay abandon.

More on the stellar cast below, but what of the story? Rossini’s cheery concoction, with its libretto by Jacopo Ferretti, is of course a retelling of the vintage fairy tale first published in 1697 and subsequently re-published by the Grimm Brothers circa 1812. Fans beware: Rossini’s version is different from others with some dissimilar elements, which this plot-spoiler adverse reviewer won’t disclose. But the essential storyline remains the same.

In essence, poor little Cinderella is mercilessly exploited by her stepsisters Clorinda (soprano Stacey Tappan) and Tisbe (played, in a bit of unconventional if welcome casting -- despite a libretto line referring to her ivory white skin -- by the Black mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), and step-father, the wittily named Don Magnifico (Italian baritone Alessandro Corbelli). These three rascals dream of grandeur, but apparently live in a home that has seen better days, hence the cutest mice this side of the Mickey Mouse Club and the Mouseketeers in the household that is slavishly looked after by the downtrodden Cinderella. She is reduced in status and role to a mere scullery maid, a servant -- if not an outright slave -- by her step-siblings and stepfather, who are genuinely cruel to this impoverished but pretty young lady who sweeps the cinders and cooks their meals.

In the guise of a fairy tale Rossini and his librettist are clearly making reference to the exploitation of labor. Other scenes and characters reinforce a social critique composed a year before the birth of Karl Marx. In an expression of class solidarity as well as in a simple humane act of compassion, Cinderella surreptitiously gives a character she believes to be a beggar -- whom her haughty stepsisters with their pretensions towards superiority scorn -- food.

But this aspect of class conflict is further expressed by another character, and ladies and gentlemen, please allow me the pleasure of introducing you to the great Dandini. In Cinderella there’s a lot of mistaken and/or hidden identity -- an operatic convention -- and Dandini is actually the (not-so-)humble servant of dashing Don Ramiro (tenor Rene Barbera), although through a series of plot contrivances they trade places and switch roles. Dandini relishes playing the powerful prince and assumes this part, full of social status and stature, with gusto. He enjoys dressing for the part and is quite a dandy -- hence his rather hilariously apropos nomenclature. Priante plays the character with great panache, full of sparkling wit, in portraying the subservient flunky who yearns to be the top banana, but for the unfair societal pecking order he is, unfortunately, born into.

Rossini’s titular character in The Barber of Seville similarly chafes under these unfair class distinctions imposed upon Figaro, who is also the lead character in Mozart’s 18^th century The Marriage of Figaro. Through these class conscious characters in class conflict with their “betters” Mozart expressed nascent Enlightenment ideals while Rossini evoked the French Revolution’s principles of “Liberte, eqalite, fraternite.” One can easily imagine both Figaro and Dandini singing Tevye’s lament in Fiddler on the Roof: “Lord… Would it spoil some vast eternal plan, If I were a wealthy man?”

Although Rossini explores themes of class struggle in Cinderella, the war between the classes is resolved magically -- with a dose of Christian morality -- through the genre conventions of the fairytale, wherein all the characters live happily ever after (with the possible exception of that rapscallion Dandini, who is, alas, once again reduced to servitude). However, the Italian composer was also capable of positing a political solution to social injustice. Rossini’s final opera, William Tell, is an explicitly political tale about revolution, which celebrates Swiss resistance to the tyrannical Hapsburg dynasty. Interestingly, like Cinderella, this 1829 opera is also suggested by legend (if not fairytales per se). In it, Rossini renders rousing music of a revolutionary nature, of justice triumphing over oppression. As all good Lone Ranger fans know its brassy musical fanfare and theme literally trumpeting the arrival of righteousness is derived from the incomparable, galloping William Tell Overture.

But in Cinderella we have a more playful Rossini, his bel canto opera full of great comic performances by droll, grandiose stepsisters and a stepfather who never miss the opportunity to overstep their boundaries; those whimsical, cavorting acrobatic rodents; and the one, the only great Dandini. Cinderella touchingly sings, “Virtue is my splendor, love my wealth” and later, when the wrongs are righted and the last has become first, she warbles: “My revenge is forgiveness.”

What a great fable full of utopian sentiment, of commoners and royals united in a moral certitude and rectitude.

This opera is ideal for children of all ages.


Cinderella runs through April 7 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

 

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THEATER REVIEW: ALBERT HERRING

A scene from Albert Herring.

Sex sings

By Ed Rampell

Benjamin Britten’s comedy of manners, Albert Herring, premiered in 1947 at Glyndebourne, a grand country manor in the veddy British countryside near East Sussex. But this good fun opera about sexual repression unfortunately remains all-too-contemporary, what with Republican presidential candidates debating contraception and Rick Satan-orum running for witch-burner-in-chief and all.

When the prim and not so proper village of Loxford runs out of vestal virgins for its annual, traditional May Day Festival (no red flags, please -- this is Edwardian England, after all), they turn to the virginal and eponymous Albert Herring (tenor Alek Shrader). Like his nation’s future prime minister, Margaret Thatcher, Albert is the child of a green grocer (mezzo-soprano Jane Bunnell). Much as with today’s GOP buffoons, Loxford’s power players place a premium on chastity, as well as on greed.

The resident one percenter, Lady Billows (Scottish singer Janis Kelly alternates in the role with soprano Christine Brewer), is tended to by Florence Pike (mezzo-soprano Ronnita Nicole Miller), a domestic servant with airs, at her ladyship’s posh estate, beautifully evoked by scenic designer Kevin Knight. Lady Billows offers a handsome sum as reward for Albert’s virtue, while she presides over a retinue of comical sycophants. The festival committee includes those not so stellar pillars of the community: The Vicar Mr. Gedge (baritone Jonathan Michie); the Mayor Mr. Upfold (tenor Robert McPherson); the Superintendent of Police Budd (bass Richard Bernstein); and the teacher Miss Wordsworth, a sort of old maid, well-played by soprano Stacey Tappan.

Not all of the Loxforders pretend to be such goody two shoes. A trio of undomesticated youngsters add to levity. The drolly named Sid and Nancy may not be punk rockers like the Sex Pistols’ Sid Vicious and his girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, but as the youthful lovers baritone Liam Bonner and mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack add a devil-may-care ingredient to the simmering stew of social propriety. Ultimately, boys will be boys, and predictably, as Albert is quite publicly lauded for his moral uprightness, with a little help from the mischievous Sid and Lady Billows’ bounty, all hell breaks loose. Much to the constable’s consternation amidst several, uh, red herrings, he is no longer a Prince Albert in a can. Although Albert’s coming of age is couched in hetero camouflage, Britten was reportedly gay, and his lampooning of sexual repression may have been his encoded ripostes to homophobia.

Mr. Knight’ sets, with rather large models of various homes in the background, aesthetically evoke the English countryside, while his period costumes conjure up a highly class stratified and rarefied era. Whereas Lady Billows’ home is suggestive of manorial splendor (not unlike, one suspects, Glyndebourne), the Herrings’ claustrophobic grocery shop is realistically rendered. The scenic transitions, enhanced by Rick Fisher’s lights, are gems as the Shanghaied cast, apparently impressed into service as stagehands, seamlessly, fluidly move from one time and place to another. But the fact that part of the background is simply bare and black -- at least viewed from my angle -- distracted me from Samuel Coleridge’s willing suspension of disbelief.

James Conlon’s baton reigns over a 13-piece orchestra with a sprightly score and much recitative singing, although there is no breakout aria or solo number per se that shakes the rafters. Paul Curran adeptly directs his ensemble cast with a flair for the bawdy and vaudevillean. Herring’s libretto, by Eric Crozier, is based on the French writer Guy de Maupassant’s short story Le Rosier de Madame Husson. Although sung in English supertitles are projected in English throughout the performance. Rule Britannia!

Innocence -- or rather innocence lost -- is a recurring theme in Britten’s work; his operatic take on Herman Melville’s angelic but doomed sailor Billy Budd (the mariner has the same last name as Herring’s policeman) premiered in 1951. Undercurrents of angsty sexuality roiled Britten’s version of Henry James’ symbolically titled The Turn of the Screw, which debuted in 1954 and was staged by L.A. Opera last season. (The centennial of Britten’s birth is next year.) While Britten put the sex into East Sussex, the hanky-panky in Albert Herring is largely played for laughs, although beneath the surface Britten’s opera jabs the tyrannical puritanical busybody brigades of then and now. One wonders what opéras bouffes the current Republican presidential race will someday inspire?  


Albert Herring runs through 17  at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

  

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THEATER REVIEW: SIMON BOCCANEGRA

Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) in Simon Boccanegra. Photo by Robert Millard.

Dialectic of Enlightenment

By Ed Rampell

Widely perceived as a hoity-toity elite art form for the one percent, opera often gets a bum rap as a stuffed shirts’ sonic sphere, but Giuseppe Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra (based on a similarly named historical figure) gives the lie to this cliché. Marx and Engels wrote in 1848’s Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle,” and with its plebians versus patricians battle, this clash is clearly reflected in Simon Boccanegra, which premiered nine years later at Venice. Verdi’s opera opens in medieval Genoa (the Italian coastal city-state Christopher Columbus hailed from) as Simon Boccanegra (Placido Domingo) is voted Genoa’s first “Doge."

According to conductor James Conlon’s pre-opera lecture, in the 14^th century Venetian dialect Doge is the 20^th century Italian language equivalent of “Il Duce”-- Benito Mussolini’s title -- and means “duke” or “leader.” But Simon was no Blackshirted fascist. Indeed, he is a man of the people, a former pirate who represents the aspirations and interests of the masses against the patrician class -- the Middle Age’s aristocratic one percent. Originally, Genoa’s Doge was elected by popular suffrage, although his term of office was for life. If I understood Conlon correctly, this 1339 election marked Europe’s first democratically elected head of government.

Set against this background of power struggles, Verdi agilely interweaves a complex personal story full of mistaken identities, as the opera jump cuts to circa 1364. No simple Simon, Boccanegra still serves as Genoa’s Doge, as he tries to balance the plebian-patrician strife plus possible war with the competing city-state of Venice. Like a prototype of Flower Power leaders, Simon says “peace and love” and pursues policies to implement them. Harboring quarter century old grievances, the base bass Jacopo Fiesco (Vitalij Kowaljow) plots to topple the Doge and assumes the identity of Andrea Grimaldi. In the process, he unwittingly adopts a girl called Amelia Grimaldi (Ana Maria Martinez) who -- unbeknownst to all at this point -- is not only Fiesco/Andrea’s granddaughter, but Simon’s long lost love child.

Fiesco’s fiasco triggers a series of complicated events your spoiler adverse reviewer is loathe (and too lazy) to reveal. The golddigging Paolo Albiani (Paolo Gavanelli) and Gabriele Adorno (Stefano Secco) each woo Amelia. For some dubious reason the hotheaded Adorno is a hero of this opera, although he not only threatens to murder Simon -- whom he mistakenly believes to be likewise courting Amelia -- but his beloved, too, when Adorno suspects Amelia of being unfaithful to him. At one point, I wanted to shout out, “Hey Amelia! Why don’t you just tell Adorno that you found out Simon is actually your father, moron?” -- but I don’t think the crowd at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion and Verdi’s ghost would have appreciated it. (Ironically, just as Grimaldi is now the name of Monaco’s royalty, Theodor W. Adorno was a prominent 20^th century Marxist thinker of the so-called Frankfurt School, whose students included Angela Davis.)

Suffice it to say, this being a non-comedic opera, a melodramatic death with a requisite amount of staggering about onstage is required, and Verdi, but of course, delivers the goods, the bads and the uglies in this action packed precursor to those Spaghetti Westerns. (Take one wild guess who gets to chew the scenery during the big scene?) What Verdi doesn’t deliver, however, is a toe tapping aria fans leave the theatre humming. This, along with the overtly political nature of the subject matter, may have prevented Simon Boccanegra from scaling La Scala’s heights in the operatic pantheon, alongside of, say, Verdi’s La Traviata and Aida (which I still remember being staged at the Roman Forum with live camels and elephants when I was 12).

That’s not to say that the score isn’t sonorous, as well as wide ranging in its tonality. Harps and understated wind instruments convey a sense of serenity, while at other times brassy instrumentation and drumming conjure up the martial mood necessary for much of this class struggle text, with its libretto by Francesco Maria Piave and Arrigo Boito. Conlon’s supple baton nimbly presides over the orchestra and work which he clearly dearly loves.

Director Elijah Moshinsky’s mise-en-scene of this Les Miserable-type mass drama is masterfully staged, as what I imagine must be the entire L.A. Opera cast (and crew?), 50 or so performers by my count, bring alive the historical epic sweep of this saga inspired by actual events. Fight (club) director Charles Currier’s brio on the boards evokes the dueling and demos of a restive populace. Costume designer Peter Hall’s brilliantly colored medieval apparel captures the spirit of that bygone age, and helps to transport us back in time.

But kudos go to scenic designer Michael Yeargan’s colossal sets, once again bringing medieval Italy back to life, as they did last year with Yeargan’s scenery for L.A. Opera’s production of Verdi’s Rigoletto. Yeargan’s Genoa imparts a sense of the sea worthy of the burg that produced Columbus, while his massive columns evoke an imperial sensibility. Act I’s Council Chamber scene is bravura, and the map room in the Doge’s palace during Act II isn’t too shabby, either. And I don’t know if Yeargan is responsible for the graffiti scrawled on the wall, proclaiming in Italian “Victory to the people!” and similar slogans during a scene of mass protest, but it’s a worthy addition, considering that the Occupy L.A. encampment was just a stone’s throw away at City Hall, which is visible from the Music Center.

Simon Boccanegra premiered in 1857 as Italy was on the verge of a unification the politically-minded Verdi agitated for, both on and offstage, as a deputy in unified Italy’s parliament. Similarly, L.A. Opera continues to present socially relevant works, and one likes to think that Placido Domingo’s Simon would have supported the Occupy Wall Street movement, just as Domingo’s Pablo Neruda in 2010’s Il Postino most assuredly would have. Despite the pricey seats, these are operas for the 99 percent that express the tenor of their times.

Simon Boccanegra runs through March 4 at L.A. Opera at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, 135 N. Grand Ave. For more info: 213/972-8001; www.laopera.com.

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