An elderly cleaning lady busies herself looking after cramped servant quarters, dusting, sweeping and loading powder into a bank of washing machines. The familiar overture starts and the washing machines spring into life gently tumbling their loads, becoming dangerously unstable as they – and the music – gain speed so that objects fall about in the chaos. Welcome to Kirill Serebrennikov’s production of The Marriage of Figaro for Komische Oper, a version that completely upends the opera’s traditional conventions, re-examining the ritual of seduction in ways that are shocking, audacious and disturbing. The music is as gorgeous as ever but the edgy production is packed with fun and wit making it hugely enjoyable.
For context, Serebrennikov ran Moscow’s Gogol Center but spent two years under Russian house arrest, accused of embezzlement. Eventually cleared and released, he now lives in Berlin. He claims that Mozart’s music saved his sanity during difficult times. This Marriage of Figaro is the second part of his Da Ponte trilogy, his Cosi Fan Tutte first appearing in Zurich with a Don Giovanni anticipated.
Serebrennikov directs and designs, his horizontally split upstairs-downstairs set has a low ceilinged cluttered grubby disorder of cleaning equipment, shopping trolleys and clothes lockers where the cast change into their smart black servant uniforms with red monograms. Upstairs, hogging the top two thirds of the stage, is an elegant minimalist apartment with contemporary art – a huge silvery inflatable abstract Jeff Koon-like centrepiece later joined by neon slogans. As well as challenging the rich vs poor divide, Serebrennikov re-examines the intricacies of relationships, the roles of men and women, and explores contemporary ideas of identity, all on shifting sands in recent decades.
Roles are changed and characters are added; for example, Marcellina becoming a haughty head-of-house art curator. But the biggest difference is Cherubino played as a mute, his actions interpreted and sung by Cherubina, which opens up more possibilities, giving a deeper insight into the role. In a split cast for the three day run in Edinburgh, Patricia Nolz’s pure mezzo was an absolute knock-out in her arias, judiciously scaling back in the central sections before vibrant finishes. Actor/gymnast Georgy Kudrenko was a physically theatrical Cherubino with challenging behaviour culminating in the most entertaining defenestration ever – with a short Tosca reference thrown in. But Nolz’s “Voi che sapete” as Kudrenko acted out his feelings was a deeply moving high point.
The singing was generally excellent. Heading the cast, Penny Sofroniadou was a skilfully mischievous Susanna, delivering sparking pure arias and recitatives conniving with her fiancé Figaro, sonorously sung by Peter Kelllner, to get the better of Hubert Zapiór’s haughty Count Almaviva, delivered in silky baritone. Verity Wingate was the Countess, lightly sung in parts, caught in the middle of the shenanigans. Tijl Faveyts as a gruff Bartolo and Johannes Dunz as Basilio rounded up the singers, with the huge figure of Peter Lobert’s Antonio providing amusement. The ensemble singing was a finely balanced delight as conductor James Gaffigan guided the Komische Oper orchestra sensitively with characterful woodwinds and brass.
Serebrennikov takes liberties with the music, moving some key arias and adding liquid light projected dream sequences with music from Così fan tutte as the Count imagines a naughty threesome with Susanna and the Countess. More baffling is the kitchen boy clambering up a tower of junk from the stygian downstairs to knife everyone at the Count’s exclusive art exhibition and, again, when all the staff retreat downstairs and enthusiastically stab breadboards. Music from Mozart’s “Dissonance” String Quartet interrupts the finale as the Count wistfully catches a reflection of himself in a silvery smoke-and-mirror finale.
I enjoyed the physicality and Serebrennikov’s witty stagecraft that peppered the production but sometimes there was almost too much going on to take in, especially when amusing phone texts were scrolled, the harpsichord chiming a Mozartian ringtone. More playfulness has the Count, terrified of catching disease from his servants, pursued by an aide with sanitiser and a supply of gloves. Ingenious though the set was, it did throw up sightline challenges for those not sitting in the Grand Circle.
Edinburgh International Festival Director Nicola Benedetti believes in the need to challenge traditional musical conventions, matching the passion of Komische’s Musical Director James Gaffigan to reimagine how opera is communicated to today’s audiences. One might pick holes in Serebrennikov’s production, but although not subtle, it demands to be seen as it pushes boundaries, his neon slogan silently thundering “Capitalism kills love”.
