Marriage of Figaro, San Francisco Opera, Oct. 10 2010

Das Rheingold yesterday, followed immediately by an author/book-signing event by Lotfi Mansouri, former general director of San Francisco Opera, followed today by San Francisco Opera's performance of The Marriage of Figaro. Fall opera season is busy, but boy is it fun!

The production, by John Copley, dates back to 1986; this is the sixth season in which it has been seen. The sets are lovely, traditional, and in no need of being updated. In Act 1 we see the room that the Count has given to Figaro and Susanna, with two-story tall golden-brown walls and a wooden staircase leading up to a balcony that provides access to the Count's and Countess's bedrooms. There is a bedframe, an armoire, and a dressing-table—and of course a large wooden chair in which Cherubino will hide. Act 2, in the Countess's bedroom, has the same golden-brown walls, and a large bed. The bedroom door is backstage center, the closet is to the right, and the window is to the left. (In a nice bit of stagecraft, Susanna will open the curtains and the sun will stream in.) Act 3 is the one incongruous setting, in a courtyard. There are iron gates to the left, the castle behind (with perfectly rendered Spanish clay tiles), a Moorish design on the wall, and a writing desk at the side of the courtyard. Act 4, in the garden, is dominated by tall Lombardy poplars; there are a few steps leading up to a higher level of the garden. The pavilion is offstage.

Our cast:
Figaro: Kostas Smoriginas
Susanna: Heidi Stober
Countess Almaviva: Ellie Dehn
Cherubino: Michèle Losier
Count Almaviva: Trevor Scheunemann
Marcellina: Catherine Cook
Don Basilio: Greg Fedderly
Doctor Bartolo: Dale Travis
Don Curzio: Robert MacNeil
Barbarina: Sara Gartland
Conductor: Nicola Luisotti
(Luca Pisaroni, Danielle de Niese, Lucas Meacham, and John Del Carlo had sung in earlier performances in this run.) What was notable about this performance was the stage action—how many ideas were due to the singers, and how many to the director, is one the great imponderables, but there were any number of nice touches. For example, when Cherubino enters the Countess's bedroom in Act 2, Luisotti played the first bar of “Non piu andrai” on the harpsichord. When Cherubino enters the garden in Act 4, he (she) is humming the same tune. When the Count knocks on the Countess's door, Cherubino's first impulse is to hide under the bedcovers, echoing his hiding under Susanna's dress (in this production, a patterned sheet) in Act 1. In Act 3, after Figaro has discovered that Marcellina is his mother, and after Susanna slaps him, he goes and buries his head in his mother's lap just like a little boy. This last bit is something that is funny once, but probably not nearly as effective if seen a second time, like the tank in Laurent Pelly's production of Daughter of the Regiment.

Vocally, Ellie Dehn's Countess was the standout, with her two big arias "Porgi amor" and "Dove sono" being particularly effective. Don Basilio projected well; the remaining singers did not. They seemed to be young voices not accustomed to filling a space the size of the San Francisco Opera House. Overall, the performance was a success, with more audience laughter than is typical, and leading up to a moving “Perdono, perdono” finale in the garden. A beta.