Music Reviews

Feb 16, 2002 - Nevada Opera's "Marriage of Figaro" Shines at the Pioneer

By Jack Neal

Nevada Opera continues to enthrall Reno audiences with its polished, musically fulfilling and highly entertaining productions.

The company's latest offering, Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro," was unveiled Friday night (2/15/2002) at Reno's Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts. It had all the brio, depth and soul, and - yes - grandeur that has made this witty and droll drawing-room farce a hit since it was first produced in Vienna in 1786.

Who, except the most dour, can resist the wit and charm that flow with abandon from Lorenzo da Pont's irresistible libretto for this classic comic opera about the amorous trysts of and between the working and upper classes? As a vehicle for da Ponte's words, Mozart's beautifully crafted, inspired and sublimely lyric music is quite possibly the most devine fit of music to word ever devised.

Professional avant-gardists often adopt a sneering tone toward opera, scorning it as a defunct art wholly given over to the performance of familiar, innocuous repertory pieces. Let those who doubt opera as living, viable theater experience Nevada Opera's "The Marriage of Figaro."

Director Buck Ross has staged the opera with wit and wisdom. Nevada Opera Artistic Director Robin Andrew Stamper conducts with panache and flair. Since nothing on stage works without a first-rate cast, Stamper has assembled an accomplished collection of young and near young singers and actors who make this "Marriage of Figaro" work like a light-hearted, fast-moving Billy Wilder movie comedy.

This Ross/Stamper "Marriage of Figaro" is terrific to watch; its action is quick and light, yet never cloyingly cute. The ornate, lavish 18th century sets, designed by Wally Coberg and Craig Saeger, and costumes, designed by Elizabeth Frederickson, are a feast for the eyes as are Don Smith's radiant lighting designs and keep grand opera's reputation for being grand looking alive and well.

Their "Marriage" is also a scrumptious affair to hear. According to the play's (from which the opera is based) original staging notes, "Count Almaviva," the lecher around whose sordid reputation the opera revolves, "should be played with great dignity, yet with grace and affability. The depravity of his morals should in no way detract from the elegance of his manners."

Baritone Philip Horst, who sings and plays the Count, errs in exactly those directions, making the Count a loutish wifeabuser with elegant taste. Singing with a gorgeous sound, Lewis proves himself to be an accomplished Mozartean as well. He parlays the Count into a strong central character around whom the story can swirl - and swirl it does.

Brian Banion is a buoyant, handsome Figaro who sings with a beautiful baritone and a grand sense of style. Genaro Mendez offers a delightful Don Basilio, whose oily personality is complemented by his slippery demeanor. Looking a tad like the Cowardly Lion, David Ward sings a marvelously stuffy, frustrated Bartolo. Roland Wunderling's Don Curzio and Stuart Duke's Antonio are studies in comic characterization, both physically and vocally.

All of the female members of the cast deserve bravas.

Mary Elizabeth Southworth runs Susanna's dramatic gamut without a hitch and she sings, as they all do, with a crystalline soprano that's just right for Mozart style. Katharine DeBoer gives a generously outsized characterization of Marcellina, her voice and physique being perfectly suited to the role. In the simple but crucial matter of making an audience believe a soprano is a good-looking teenage boy, Marie Anne Kowan creates an exquisitely plausable Cherubino. Laura Knoop Very is a vocally and dramatically superb Countess Almaviva. Susan Pauline Lewis is a fetching Barbarina.

So dense are the opera's deceptions and the cross-purposes of its plot, it is in the fourth act that stage directors of "Figaro" come into their own. All too often this act is staged as a mere succession of arias. Ross not only keeps the clockwork mechanism of the plot lucid and plausible he also ups the emotional ante of the situation. Listeners are invited to consider each successive aria as a meditation of a character poised on a precarious emotional cliff of sorts, raising exceptional human truths from the music's depths. The cast's elegant singing and adroit acting and the orchestra's sensitive playing help mine those depths with rare insight.

Nevada Opera's "The Marriage of Figaro" will be repeated Sunday afternoon (2/17/2002) at 2 p.m. at the Pioneer Center for the Performing Arts, 100 South Virginia Street, Reno. For information call 775-786-4046 or 775-686-6600.