Opera Australia's brisk touring version of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro is in English (done by the director, Australian playwright Michael Gow) and has lost much of its recitative to dialogue but this makes it an excellent introduction to the work. The convolutions of the plot become clearer, the set has a lot of fun with hidden doors and windows and Mozart's music is always a joy.
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The plot is about as crazy as a plot can get, with much to say about love and marriage and gender and class in an 18th-century setting. The wedding of the Count's servant Figaro (Jeremy Kleeman) to the Countess's servant Susanna (Celeste Lazarenko) is imminent. But the Count (Simon Meadows) has designs on Susanna and Marcellina (Kristen Leich) hankers after Figaro. Young Cherubino (Agnes Sarkis), loves indiscriminately, with the short attention span of a hormonal teenage boy.
There's attempted blackmail and disguises and gorgeous period costumes and night time encounters and misunderstandings and long lost offspring and leaping from upstairs windows and people in rooms they should not be in.
The characters come down to the footlights to sing and talk to the audience on Robert Kemp's proscenium framed set, an exquisite corner of a rich room where the walls are painted with a pastoral scene, the peace of which belies the passions of the characters. With the cunning addition of a gauze curtain that can be drawn across to reveal or conceal and with some exquisite lighting moments from designer Matt Scott the space subtly produces the necessary times and places, from rooms to gardens, from day to night.
The Canberra Theatre is a much-cherished theatre space but can be a bit of a barn and occasionally the diction and projection isn't quite clear enough for all the words to be heard. The use of a chamber orchestra, however, assists the singers and creates a more intimate scale. The humour and ironies come through well and there are excellent performances from the opening night cast, especially from Lazarenko's wise and funny Susanna, Kleeman's straightforward Figaro, Emma Castelli as the dignified and wronged Countess and Sarkis as the clumsy but lovable Cherubino.
And there's the next generation of singers and performers in OA's use of regional groups as a children's chorus. Servants and wedding guests and villagers are being done in Canberra by Woden Valley Youth Choir and Wild Voices Music Theatre Junior Voices, on opening night with grace and capability by Wild Voices.
It's a spare version but certainly not Spartan. Gains mostly outweigh compromises in this delightful Figaro.
The Marriage of Figaro. Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte. English translation and adaptation by Michael Gow. Directed by Michael Gow. Conducted by Paul Fitzsimon. Opera Australia. The Canberra Theatre, Canberra Theatre Centre. Until August 27 at 7.30pm, Matinee August 27 at 1pm. 6275 2700 or canberratheatrecentre.com.au.
