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 Now the company presents a new staging by director Evgeny
Pisarev that is intended to accent the opera's lyricism with a
cast of mostly young singers, conducted by British maestro
William Lacey.
"I am not going to present any radical concepts about how
everyone misunderstood this opera until I -- the genius -- came
along and explained it to the world," Lacey told Reuters
Television, speaking before the production premiered on April 25
for a run of eight performances.
"No, I'd like to look at it in the exact opposite direction,
which is that Mozart wrote this opera, it's his piece, and here
is his score and this is where everything comes from ... I try
and make the work about serving Mozart and not about advertising
my own brilliance," Lacey said.
He invited singers from the Bolshoi and beyond to take part in
the new staging. Among them are both young singers and those who
have already performed on the world's best stages.
Moscow-born bass Alexander Vinogradov takes the demanding role
of Figaro, valet to the womanish Count Almaviva, who has his
sights set on Figaro's bride-to-be, Susanna.
The stage action as Figaro thwarts the count is a great version
of drawing-room comedy in opera. It unfurls over three and a
half hours, with Figaro on stage much of the time.
"It is often forgotten that everything happens over the course
of just one day and the full name of the opera ... is `The Crazy
Day or the Marriage of Figaro' .... And at the end of such a day
you are like this ... 'That's it, I am exhausted'," Vinogradov
said as he prepared to go on stage.
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This is director Pisarev's second staging of the story; he recently
directed the Beaumarchais play on which the opera is based. Soon
after that, he was invited to do the opera, so he had to come up
with a new interpretation.
"We are not showing real people, modern times. It is a kind of
pastiche in the spirit of the Yves Saint Laurent, Coco Chanel
fashion, or some paintings of Mondrian, of French and Italian movies
from the 1960s," Pisarev said.
"It is some kind of a fantasy -- bright, festive, more related to
modern days than to some baroque pictures that nowadays look
fictitious."
The cast hopes the staging will result in a surge of popularity for
Mozart's masterpiece -- and that it becomes a regular part of the
company's repertoire.
(Reporting by Reuters Television, writing by Michael Roddy; editing
by Larry King)
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