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Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
Abomination!!!
If I had been in the audience at this performance I would have booed from the very beginning and throughout this horrible production. The singing was OK, the recits too slow and ponderous and WHAT was going on in the pit with all those pauses that added beats to pieces?
The Eros dancer was unnecessary; the Count wa a simpering idiot and I couldn't decide if he was sweating or had allergies or a nose bleed. Bartolo in a wheel chair? COME ON! It became about picking up papers and how he would get back in the chair! The "non piu andrai" was the worst travesty. I'm sorry the Salzburg audience had to be subjected to this at those prices. I will have a great deal of trouble watching the rest and THANK GOD I didn't buy it!
Rating: 
-
Different, but interesting.
This is a modern version of the Marriage of Figaro.
It is quite different, but very interesting if you put aside what you've known about this opera and watch it as an opera you watch for the first time!?
All the singers have wonderful voice.
Rating: 
-
Brilliant and mesmerizing
This is an intense and unblinking look at human relationships and the social frames in which they are set. It is about our desperate determination to fit into such frames and to uphold them, against our deepest yearnings to transcend them. There are lovelier and funnier versions of Figaro, but I doubt that there is a more gripping exploration of the interplay between the social and the personal, public and private.
The production takes many risks, but it is so daring in conception and so creative in execution that all gambles pay off. The staging is one of complex visual allusions and minutely devised choreography. While not bathed in rococo pink, it is never bleak or monochromatic. The characters dangle in hope and fear, longing to connect and not having the courage to do so. Love is imagined, craved for, groped for, and then suppressed, deemed impractical, pushed aside. Repressive power does not simply emanate from the Count. It is internalized in everyone--albeit to varying degrees. Harnoncourt's tempos allow the opera's emotional intensity to fully unfold and passages of haunting beauty to emerge afresh. A number of scenes have a dream-like quality; they put you into a trance and allow you to truly hear the shades of feeling in the music. It could be called a modernist production, but none of it is there just to be different. It is there to visualize the relationships expressed in the music. It illuminates angles that I had never seen, heard, or imagined before. The comparison to an Ingmar Bergman film is apt in terms of the emotional and erotic charge, the superb use of light and shadow, even the camera-work. The shots from high above the stage, toward the folly, desolation, and--yes--hope below are magnificent. For despite all the loneliness and brutality and despair, there is hope. `Voi che sapete' is the most heavenly I have ever seen. Yes, seen, as this is a performance that you really have to see, not just hear.
This is a version for adults. Dim the lights and let yourself be moved. Our ability to overcome pre-given frames is at the heart of Figaro.
Rating: -
Not your Grandma's Figaro
This is not your grandma's Figaro. At first I was surprised, then taken aback, then intrigued and then completely mesmerized. It's Figaro meets Psycho. The pacing is slower, more deliberate and the whole tone and atmosphere darker and more intense. And in the end, I think it works. The whole theme of this production is the maddening power of Eros (here portrayed by an extraneous character- a seductive non -speaking/singing young man dressed in school boy uniform with cherubic wings running around trying to manipulate all the characters) locked in a battle with "Love." In the end "Love" triumphs. (except for poor Cherubino who throughout the opera is portrayed as a poor young thing totally defenseless against the power of Eros--in the end he's reduced to a zombie). The singing and the technical quality I thought were first rate (It's a very recent production so it utilizes the latest in live sound recording..not like some of the older productions where the sound drifts when the singer moves in and out of microphone range).I think if you are not familiar with the more standard productions of Figaro, you'll have a hard time with this production, both in following the plot and understanding all the new meanings and interpretations that are being created. But if you already have seen a number of standard productions, I'd thing you may enjoy this, if not just for its strangeness. I doubt this production will ever replace the more standard production, but it sure made for an unexpected and interesting evening of opera.
Rating: -
pitiful
Mozart would be ashamed. This is a desecration of a masterpiece. The entire cast and everyone associated should be ashamed.