In The Marriage of Figaro, Mozart sweeps a beam over all life, tears and laughter as one. David McVicar’s 2006 staging, which opened the Royal Opera’s new season last Monday in its 11th revival, handles these extremes, and the nuances in between, with precision and wit. Some of the tics – the perpetual floor sweeping, the leapfrogging antics of liveried extras in the household of Count Almaviva – succeed or tire, depending on the skills of a particular lineup: easy to ignore or to enjoy. Long may this handsome period production, designed by Tanya McCallin, last.
Even if you grasp, more or less, the complexities of Lorenzo da Ponte’s libretto, the mysteries of Mozart’s score, conducted with verve here by Julia Jones, are another matter. Take the unravelling of the plot towards the end of Act 2. Strings repeat a tiny motif more than two dozen times, sustaining the tension, almost to distraction, while all kinds of harmonic miracles and verbal jokes are twisted through. Did Mozart, lover of puzzles and games, create a set of rules for himself, chuckling as he stitched this insignificant, 10-note figure into one of the most ingenious stretches of music ever?
