OPERA REVIEW
“The Marriage of Figaro”
7:30 p.m. April 7; 8 p.m. April 10; 3 p.m. April 12. $24-$125. Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, 2800 Cobb Galleria Parkway, Atlanta. 404-881-8885, www.atlantaopera.org.
The Atlanta Opera’s fun and colorful production of “The Marriage of Figaro,” currently on stage at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre, gives a breath of fresh air that seems as welcome and invigorating as the spring weather.
Mozart’s melodies, like pizza and the Beatles, have universal appeal. Of course, this broad appeal also comes with some challenges. The familiarity of the work (how many times can you find the same situations funny?), its parade of greatest hits and its length (three hours plus is long for a comedy by contemporary standards) can make putting on a successful production tougher than it may initially seem. The whole thing needs an ineffable sense of lightness, speed and ease if it’s to go over at all.
Director Tara Faircloth smartly goes for a straightforward play-like staging, one that draws out moments of human comedy, earning genuine laughs in a show that all too often can descend into mushy facetiousness and silly mugging. Little details such as the progression of events that lead to the Count’s discovery of the hidden Cherubino in Act I are crisply delineated and inventive. It’s a type of clarity that extends to almost all of the show’s comic machinations: There is plenty to watch as the performers clearly relish their roles.
Designer Susan Benson’s sets are likewise simple and straightforward, as well, featuring walls with lovely, Fragonard-like murals with a contemporary, erotic edge: under Ken Yunker’s summery lighting they give the work a lighter-than-air visual component. Between act scene changes are accomplished with the curtain up. There are some moments of awkward silence, but overall it makes for swift transitions.
On opening night, the overture and early scenes lacked the full momentum and precision that help give Act I its sense of excitement, and voices, too, were less impressive early on. Cast and orchestra alike seemed to find their footing as the show progressed, with mezzo-soprano Naomi O’Connell in the trouser role of the amorous youth Cherubino as an early standout. She’s a delight, a fine singer as well as an impressively alert and supple comedienne. She turns the largo passages of “Non so più” into a dreamy show-stopper, and her “Voi che sapete,” which can easily become sing-songy and cloying, had real longing and depth. Victoria Livengood as Marcellina goes over-the-top in a part that was designed for just that, giving the role of Marcellina a wild, almost Fellini-like comic broadness and weirdness.
Craig Colclough is unflagging as Figaro contending for the unsullied virtue of his fiancée Susanna, played with just the right sass by Lauren Snouffer. John Moore gives a deliciously wicked and unscrupulous but believable Count Almaviva bent on sampling Susanna’s wares before Figaro, while Katie Van Kooten as the Countess plays up the ambivalence and melancholy of her fortune’s turn. Most of the cast members are making their Atlanta Opera debuts, and among them is Atlanta native soprano Megan Mashburn in the small role of Barbarina; she sounds lovely and sympathetic fretting over a lost pin in her late show aria “L’ ho perduta, me meschina.”
There’s nothing incredibly new about the Atlanta Opera’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” which may be one of the show’s strengths. It’s a straight-forward approach that allows the classic to speak for itself. After all, the famous melodies and comic machinations, as well as some of its more sub-surface sexual and class comedy, have made it a hit for centuries.
