Joe Hill-Gibbons’s English National Opera production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro was strangled at birth in March 2020. After one sparsely attended performance it was closed down, a victim of the pandemic that was just getting into gear. So this week’s “revival” was in effect this show’s premiere.
Gibbons wants this opera to be taken as an exploration of marriage, with four couples of different ages going under the microscope, starting with Cherubino and Barbarina as the youngest. Figaro’s rocky road to matrimony with Susanna is contrasted with the embittered mid-life manoeuvres of the Count and Countess, and finally with Bartolo and Marcelina, whose cynical machinations are stopped in their tracks by the revelation that Figaro – whom Marcellina is trying to coerce into matrimony – is in fact her long-lost baby son.
Unfortunately this intended message is more than a little hampered by the style in which it’s delivered. The lights go up on a white box with four identical white doors which open in turn to reveal members of the cast. We soon realise that this cliché is going to be worked to death, because this is all there is for a set.
The doors have to do service in all the scenes where the comedy depends on characters being hidden and discovered, and they need to evoke the cluttered reality of the house where the drama unfolds. But as the fun gets faster and more furious, we absolutely need sofas and domestic paraphernalia to make sense of what’s going on. All those goddamn doors can do is spread confusion.
What’s worse are the bonkers costumes, and the way the director and designer have decreed that every scene should resemble one of those tiresome magazine features where everyone is constantly freezing in improbable attitudes. All is done as though in a photo-shoot.
Paul Sheehan, Neal Davies and Pablo Strong in The Marriage of Figaro (Photo: Zoe Martin)Add in random moments when the movement style tips over into commedia dell’arte, and you have a recipe for serious irritation.
The Royal Opera House's Jenufa is unforgettable
Read MoreMusically speaking, however, there is much to enjoy. Hanna Hipp’s jealous Cherubino may be an awkward characterisation, and David Ireland’s Figaro and Cody Quattlebaum’s Count Almaviva may be colourless creatures, but their female counterparts – Nardus Williams’s Countess and Mary Bevan’s Susanna – turn in simply glorious performances. Excellent support comes from Rebecca Evans’s Marcellina and Neal Davies’s Bartolo.
And Ainars Rubikis in the pit teases out all the mischief and beauty of the score. Go in with your eyes shut, and have a ball.
To 22 February (eno.org)
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