The Marriage of Figaro at SF Opera

Last month the San Francisco Opera offered a new production of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, which I caught up with in its penultimate performance. Let me echo the praise of others, for the production design of Erhard Rom, the costume design of Constance Hoffman, the direction by Michael Cavanagh, the singing of a tightly-knit ensemble cast, and the conducting by Henrik Nánási. (Pictured above are Catherine Cook as Marcellina and Jeanine De Bique as Susanna, singing an improbably beautiful duet that is actually a cat fight. All photos by Cory Weaver.)

The production's massive American Colonial estate can be arranged in a remarkably versatile set of arrangements, which is a relief because the same set will be used for forthcoming productions of Cosi fan Tutte next year and Don Giovanni in the subsedquent year. Cosi will be set in the 1930s and Don Giovanni in a dystopian American future (I wonder if there will be zombies.)

The Marriage of Figaro was written about contemporary life when it opened in Vienna in the late 18th century, and this production has stayed with the same time period, moving the setting from Spain to Colonial America. The original play by the French playwright Beaumarchais had to move the location from France to Spain to get past the royal censors of his time, so the geographic move to the U.S. feels perfectly fine, but it does bring into relief a particular ugliness in the story. The long play/opera is essentially a sex farce where most of the characters are thwarting the plan of an aristocrat who wants to have carnal relations with his servant's fiance. There's even a French term for it, droit du seigneur, defined as "the supposed right claimable by a feudal lord to have sexual relations with the bride of a vassal on her first night of marriage." (Pictured above is Michael Sumuel as the wily vassal Figaro.)

Every time I have seen the opera this particular detail always struck me as barbaric, ancient and foreign, but moving the story to the United States unintentionally offered a "Hey, remember slavery and rape?" moment, emphasized by the blind casting of Michael Sumuel as Figaro and Jeanine De Bique as Susanna.

I love blind (to race) casting, and in this case it made the already absurdist Act Three scene of parental discovery even more absurd, when Figaro learns his two tormentors (the marvelous Catherine Cook as Marcellina and James Creswell as Bartolo) are actually his long-lost parents. But the specter of American slavery persists in the background without being addressed by the production, which feels like a failure of imaginative nerve.

The Count can be played in many ways, from sympathetic lecher to a philandering villain, and this production leaned more towards the latter. Baritone Levent Molnar's portrayal kept bringing to mind Harvey Weinstein and the #MeToo movement which made a lot of the farcical shenanigans feel tone deaf. Nicole Heaston as his ignored Countess was convincingly sad while singing one stretch of beautiful music after another.

Mozart's music in this nearly four-hour opera is as great as anything he ever composed, which is why it will live forever. One of the best voices in the cast was Italian mezzo-soprano Serena Malfi as the teenage horny toad who triggers most of the farcical situations of the plot.

Also worthy of mention is Natalie Image as Barbarina, one of Cherubino's many love objects, who in this production has much of her usually cut role restored. I've seen this opera at least a dozen times over the years, and this was the first time I realized she was the daughter of the drunken gardener, Antonio. It's all one big, screwed-up family with wealth inequality baked in.