Le nozze di Figaro

28 Jun Le nozze di Figaro

Posted at 19:36h in Opera by

The revolution is underway! But Mozart goes further… he portrays us as we are, elevating the vices and virtues of human nature

Pictures by Silvia Lelli

nozze di figaro opera 01 chiara muti ©SilviaLelli fotografia
nozze di figaro opera 02 chiara muti ©SilviaLelli fotografia
nozze di figaro opera 03 chiara muti ©SilviaLelli fotografia
nozze di figaro opera 04 chiara muti ©SilviaLelli fotografia
nozze di figaro opera 05 chiara muti ©SilviaLelli fotografia
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Nozze-di-Figaro-03-chiara-muti-regista-min
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Pictures by Silvia Lelli

Credits

THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO by WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART
Or The Crazy Day
Teatro Petruzzelli di Bari
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
Based on the comedy La folle journée ou le mariage de Figaro by Pierre-Augustin
Caron de Beaumarchais
Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Conductor: Matthew Aucoin
Director: Chiara Muti
Sets: Ezio Antonelli
Costumes: Alessandro Lai
Lighting design: Vincent Longuemare
Costume assistant: Concetta Nappi
Premiere: Vienna, Burgtheater, May 1, 1786

Figaro
Alessandro Luongo
Count Almaviva
Edwin Crossley-Mercer
Countess Almaviva
Eleonora Buratto
Susanna
Maria Mudryak
Cherubino
Paola Gardina
Margherita Rotondi
Marcellina
Laura Cherici
Bartolo
Fabrizio Beggi
Basilio
Bruno Lazzaretti
Don Curzio
Giorgio Trucco
Barbarina
Anne Marine Suire
Antonio
Matteo Peirone

Directorial Notes

COURT – understood as a place of public domain. There is no intimacy; the central platform is a metaphor for a stage of representation, at everyone’s mercy…

The stairs symbolize the ongoing social change… a sign of continuous transformation… some rise while others fall… No position is ever guaranteed… Everything is in constant flux…

NATURE – present on stage from the beginning, nature, in the form of weeping willows, gradually takes over the space act by act… A metaphor for instinct prevailing over reason… and Nature over man…

DESIRE – present from the start on stage, repressed, betrayed, shared, rejected, masked… in all possible forms…

LOVE – in La Folle Journée all stages of love are present. Adolescent (Cherubino and Barbarina), passionate (Figaro and Susanna), betrayed and bored (Count and Countess), mature and practical (Marcellina and Bartolo), not to mention the transversal figures of Don Curzio (the stammering law), Basilio (cynical and solitary by choice and fear of suffering), and Cherubino (the embodiment of DESIRE itself). La Folle Journée is a metaphor for a tyrannical time that passes, against which no Love can defend itself… Everyday life, the first enemy of Passion, envelops the Count and Countess in boredom, as well as the social class to which they belong by birth, not conquest. In this state of melancholic apathy, the Nobility already seems defeated by the dynamism of a new social class unafraid to assert itself. — “What Virtue! What Justice!” — the Count’s own servants ironically and cryptically mock him! The Revolution is underway! But Mozart goes beyond… He paints us as we are, describing and sublimating human vices and virtues…

He depicts the misery of human nature and, at the same time, the greatness man has in facing his own destiny and forgiving himself despite everything! Despite sins and miseries…

Nature, re-entering the court, reclaims the space it deserves… Nature understood as instinct and the freedom to be oneself… far from the “walls” we have built to imprison ourselves… and in the garden, at night, instinct — the quintessentially feminine attribute — triumphs! Nature prevails over all, and within nature, forgiveness can be complete… The Countess forgives, along with the Count, our sins and imperfections, which through Mozart manifest with miraculous heights that take our breath away…

As if asking God forgiveness for us, for our miseries, but doing so with such perfection… making us believe we are part of that elusive Divine…

The Countess forgives an unfaithful man… she forgives him knowing he will sin… again and again… she forgives despite everything… and everyone responds, “Ah! So all will be content,” but very softly… almost afraid to break that enchanted moment of illusion, the one we fight for every day against adversity… A sublime moment of Truth that escapes us but for which our hearts yearn… and it is discovered, through this forgiveness, that one can be true even while lying, and rush to celebrate life… fogging the ongoing Tragedy… in the turmoil, in the tremor… to forget once more and again who we really are…

Text by Chiara Muti

“The Dynamism of a Crazy Day”

Bari: the excellent performance and effective direction by Chiara Muti ensure the full success of Le Nozze di Figaro"One of the main attractions of this production was the assignment of stage direction to Chiara Muti, and expectations were not disappointed. The director, relying on her broad and diverse theatrical background, created a staging that highlights the colorful weave of situations. Chiara Muti worked with a sure hand in defining the characters, placing them within a scenic context (the structure, on closer inspection, refers back to Erwin Piscator’s designs: the central rotating structure as a constant center for the main action) that progressively lightens, underlining the simplification and resolution of the action. But it is precisely this 'movement' that elegantly and confidently mirrors the development of the plot. Essentially, music — yet the theatrical rhythm follows suit, and Chiara Muti (assisted by Marie Lambert) enhanced it with intelligent attention and extreme sensitivity, creating an overall lively, colorful action in which the characters act with engaging dynamism. It can rightly be said, without exaggeration, that this is a direction that aligns with those historic productions once staged by Visconti, Ponnelle, Strehler, or Menotti."

“Le Nozze di Figaro like a Dream”

"Surprise: the green backdrop of the dense garden with two walkable pavilions, where Da Ponte and Mozart’s musical comedians unravel their final octosyllables, is the same where Oberon and Titania, Puck, and Bottom unspool their non-story in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. A backdrop where the lovers' movements seem tounfold through dreamlike arabesques, intertwining and dissolving enchantingly like in an elegant, abstruse dance governed by the whims of love. Dancing rhythms pervade every scene of these Nozze di Figaro at Bari’s Petruzzelli, lingering where Cherubino, Susanna, the Count of Almaviva, framed by the flashbacks of a sudden bluish light, reveal to the onlookers their nature as key characters in the story. Details like these and others preserved the show from the clichés of conventional realism, giving it wings and opening the way for Chiara Muti to novelty and originality."

Giovanni Carli Ballola
L’Espresso, 25 February 2016

“But What Poetry and What Music for Le Nozze — Success for Chiara Muti”

"An impeccable interpretation of Mozart’s opera. With an involving force. The opera came alive again with incisive fascination, where the Mozartian principle — that poetry must be the obedient daughter of music — found exemplary realization in a unity of intent, rich with emotions and delightful ideas, measured with happy intuition and fresh sensitivity, enhancing the engaging power of Mozart’s creativity. From this angle, 'madness' with its intertwining of situations — from resentment evolving into rage and the desire for personal revenge — also took musical form with involving strength, and in Chiara Muti’s stage direction, it fully reflected itself, concentrating into an incessant theatricality hosted within a scenic context whose structure emphasized and made it even more striking and engaging."

Nicola Sbisà
La Gazzetta del Mezzogiorno, 28 January 2016

“Le Nozze di Figaro: A Positive Debut in Bari for Mozart’s Masterpiece”

"In the first act of the Bari staging, Figaro sarcastically slamming and overturning the 'noble' wig stand when informed of the Count’s predatory intentions towards his Susanna seems quite an allusion to the shift in social balance and the 'heads' that the guillotine would soon make fall. And so, the crazy day unfolds as a tight weave of overwhelming passions, laced with comic and dramatic notes and animated by 'servants' who reveal themselves to be shrewder and wiser than their masters. And while the opera speeds with lively rhythm toward its happy ending over four acts that never weigh down the audience, alongside the game of social classes, love appears on stage in its many nuances dictated by the characters’ feelings and differing ages."

Enzo Garofalo
Fame di sud

“…The opera flows happily amid pastel-colored sets and costumes (by Ezio Antonelli and Alessandro Lai) and lighting inspired by Strehler’s Mozartian masterpieces. From that lesson comes Chiara Muti’s luminous and assured direction.”

Dinko Fabris
La Repubblica, 31 January 2016

“Theater and Music: an Exemplary Show at the Petruzzelli”

"The bourgeois Figaro openly challenges Count Almaviva, and the careful direction of this beautiful production, led by Chiara Muti and Matthew Aucoin for the opening of the Petruzzelli’s opera season in a finally packed theater, leaves no detail overlooked. Figaro may be a barber, but he converses knowingly with heads — his taunt to the Count ('If you’d like to dance, my little Count, I’ll play the tune') sung before a wigged head on a pole, whose wig (once overturned) serves as a broom, reveals the essence of this staging, bringing back to the Petruzzelli a particularly meaningful title in the city’s history.cA scenically and musically exemplary show, a beautiful gift to the city. It’s rare to hear a cast where every character seems to perfectly embody their role. Chiara Muti’s direction and Vincent Longuemare’s refined lighting effects teach precisely this: in a stylized late 18th century without textual misunderstandings, the director has set a crazy day in which every gesture moves in triple, if not quadruple, counterpoint."

Fiorella Sassanelli
La Repubblica Bari, 29 January 2016

“A Butterfly in Great Motion”

"It’s a Mozart grown in Strehler’s shadow that happily inaugurated the Teatro Petruzzelli season, signed by Chiara Muti, who as a child had absorbed those productions staged by her father at La Scala. Faithful to the libretto, Chiara Muti’s Nozze di Figaro allows for explanatory comic touches — for instance, Figaro’s hand miming horns at the furious 'If you’d like to dance, my little Count,' or the broom handed to Marcellina, portrayed as an energetic, all-purpose, rather comical working woman eager to mind everyone’s business. In the scenic layout, fixed for the first three acts, the central round platform works functionally as a magical ring where everything converges and draws every action like a magnet. The care in the recitatives, performed integrally and with excellent fortepiano, perfectly built the narration. Curtain fell past midnight, followed by endless applause."

Carla Moreni
Il Tempo, 1 March 2014

“…Approaching the complex theatrical mechanism of the Nozze, the director starts from the universality of Mozart’s message, aware that 'Mozart draws us as we are, describing and sublimating our vices and virtues.' The intentions of the direction thus brought out uncommon acting talents among the cast, aimed primarily at enhancing the most exquisitely dramaturgical aspects of Da Ponte’s formidable libretto at every moment of the performance."

Fernando Greco
Marilù Mastrogiovanni, 2 February 2016
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