Evan Zimmerman

The first time I saw the Richard Eyre production of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro, the revival of which is sporting a new cast from its opening last month, it instantly became one of my favorite new stagings at the Met. The visuals, thanks to designers Rob Howell (set and costumes) and Paule Constable (lighting), were delicious: the balanced palette of paper lanterns burning orange against the blue night sky, the rotating unit set somehow rich with detail (those Moorish architectural tessellations!) without tipping over from airy to overbearing. Aside from some vague and confusing moments in the opera’s finale, the sets, blocking and business all work together to make a tight, genuinely funny show.

I also had the vague sense that updating the action to the 1930s, during rise of Spain’s fascist regime, helped clarify the aesthetics and class distinctions for 21st-century audiences, while the Francoist setting retained the historical context—an aristocracy in decline, a Europe in turmoil—key to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto and to the original Beaumarchais play. But the fascist takeover of my own country helped me to realize, hearing the replacement cast at the Met on Saturday, just how closely the political movement is tied to the themes of the opera: the vindictiveness of politically powerful, sexually insecure men, and their attempts to prove their own masculinity by controlling the bodies of women.

The opera’s plot revolves around Count Almaviva’s efforts to fuck his maid, Susanna, on the night of her wedding to his servant, our hero, Figaro. You see, the Count wants to RETVRN to the made-up tradition of droit du seigneur—literally on the same day that he is also being feted for having nominally abolished the practice. While trying to cheat on his own wife, Rosina, he becomes obsessed with the idea that he is being cuckolded by Cherubino, a sweet but very horny teen, so he tries to send the boy off to war.

Evan Zimmerman

Meanwhile, Marcellina gets Figaro’s old enemy Bartolo to go along with her own scheme, to force Figaro to marry her for nonpayment of an old debt. (NOTE TO SELF: is this a standard clause in loan contracts? Must remember to read fine print.) Through a series of elaborate schemes and unlikely contrivances, Figaro and Susanna make sure all the appropriate couples end up reconciled and/or married.

Figaro is unified and self-contained, beginning in the morning and ending on the night of the titular wedding, and so when the curtain rises we get to watch it waft through the air as light as a bubble and just as delicate. And before it has a chance to burst, the curtain has already fallen, so that we feel that we are watching a story that takes place in a universe miraculously free of consequences. Almaviva is a creep, but what can you do? There’s a lot of serious harassment in the libretto, but the coercion is ultimately impotent; Cherubino is threatened with conscription, but we don’t actually see him sent off to the front lines.

But of course, the Figaro Extended Universe fandom—familiar with FEU lore from the plays and operas preceding and following this one—knows that the big picture is much darker just outside of this frame. We’re saddened by our memories of Almaviva and Rosina as a pair of young lovers, before he was corrupted by lust, jealousy and power, in The Barber of Seville.

Evan Zimmerman

And in The Guilty Mother, the entry Beaumarchais penned years after Mozart’s opera premiered, we’ll see things get darker still, with Cherubino killed in the war and Rosina raising his son as the Count’s. This production brings just a little of that darkness into the picture, making Almaviva’s womanizing luridly explicit — the character we see during the overture is a servant girl running topless across the stage — and turning his bluster into actual, physical brutality.

The weakest bits of casting in the revival’s new cast are its two leads. Luca Pisaroni gives Figaro exactly the darkness of hue, smoothness of tone, striking good looks, and dignity of bearing that the character does not require; and as Susanna, Rosa Feola’s warm, legato singing filled out the ensembles beautifully. But neither of them had the fleet, funny delivery that sells the show, and his high notes tended to bellow. (Credit where due: she nailed “Deh vieni non tardar,” an aria well-suited to her phrasing.)

Fortunately, it’s an ensemble show, and they all played well together. Jacquelyn Stucker and Adam Plachetka each brought a brilliant tone to their respective vocal performances. In a thrilling Met debut, she played a profoundly miserable Countess Rosina—a cutting, plaintive edge to her voice that made even a surprisingly brisk “Dove sono” emotionally wrenching—and he brought exactly the right mixture of menace and buffoonery to Almaviva.

Evan Zimmerman

A set mishap also afforded him the best ad-lib, and one of the biggest laughs, in the show. In the scene where the Count attempts to lock his wife’s lover in her room, he stormed back to the door, determined to reveal her lover in his hiding place—at which point Plachetka discovered that the door he had just “locked” had somehow swung open of its own accord, completely ruining the gag. Without missing a beat, he mugged broadly at the audience, letting us in on the irony, before delivering his next line: “Tutto è come io lasciai!” (Everything is just as I left it!)

It’s not going to be news to any of you faggots who saw the gorgeous Emily D’Angelo in the promo shots for Grounded that she has the requisite physicality for a convincing turn as an underaged himbo twink. Never having heard her perform live, however, I was pleasantly surprised by how effectively she interprets the role of Cherubino on every level. In the double-reverse-drag scenes, when Rosina and Susanna force-fem the kid on some screwball comedy pretext, she’s not only funny—clopping around the stage like she doesn’t know how to wear heels—she’s sexy; and her vocal assurance and artistry give the boy the swagger befitting the hero he is in his own mind.

Elizabeth Bishop and Maurizio Muraro were Marcellina and Bartolo, respectively, disappearing completely into perfectly calculated comic performances. Bishop was especially delightful, every detail of her vocal and stage performance timed and executed in service of the character and the comedy.

Evan Zimmerman

Finally, a special mention of Jazmine Saunders, making her Met debut in the slight role of Barbarina, Cherubino’s girlfriend. Though she only pops in on the piece in the last two Acts, Barbarina is frankly adorable and Saunders played her with a voice bright as a bell and a smile to match. I’ll be excited to hear more from her—I see that she’ll be singing Clara in Porgy & Bess soon.

Down in the pit, things occasionally seemed a bit out of control, as if conductor Joana Mallwitz wanted to push a little, Pisaroni and Feola wanted to drag a little, etc. I’m on #TeamJoana here; I think her tempi would have been much funnier and more fun. During the overture, a high-speed obstacle course for the strings, they did sound a little too frantic, and there was a nasty brass crack, but y’know, nobody’s nerfect. Howard Watkins played a fun and flashy fortepiano continuo during the recitatives, and while I’m told that the original instrument on this part would probably have been a harpsichord, I love the sound of the fortepiano enough that I’m not complaining.

And I love this Figaro. This is a production that has come to feel like home to me and one that I am quick to recommend to any novice who says, “What would be a good first opera at the Met this season?” I’m glad I had a chance to return to it this spring. And I hope to see it again under happier circumstances.