Elena Barbalich's mis-en-scene for Le nozze di Figaro seemed a swirling game of Chinese boxes, where several locations in Count Almaviva’s castle expand or restrict themselves, where steps open narrow passages, where walls disappear in order to show hidden spaces such as clefts, stairs, an entrance hall, balconies, corridors and bedrooms. These are all crossing points from a public dimension to a private one, but also places of intimacy, where people love each other and confess their own feelings. Spectators are invited to cast a glance to this tangled mish-mash of love, adultery, intrigues, recognition and reunification. And, even though the characters, from the aristocrats to the servants, are all punished in a pillory, nobody is ever judged with ethical sentences. It’s rather constant an almost clinical attention to their multifaceted and ambiguous relationships.
The transition from the pure classicism of the first two acts to the more abstract dimension of the following two was intriguing. The vague atmosphere of Acts III and IV was depicted by suffused lights and especially by the opaque backdrop, a sort of enormous mirror which lightly reflects the figures of the characters on stage. Everyone was observed from more than one perspective: nothing is definitive, everything can be easily reversed into its contrary. Even the static postures, almost statuesque, in the finale of the opera seemed to hint at the abstract nature, so to celebrate the ending of the opera with an ideal synthesis of all the labyrinthine dynamics which we have just seen:were full the freshness of love (with some mistakes) between Susanna and Figaro, the one eroded and nostalgic of the Countess, the curious and immature attraction of Cherubino (who loves every woman), the greedy impetus of the Count, until the final palingenesis, when the sentimental mess seemed to be recomposed into a more comforting order. However, the same notes which accompanied the final forgiveness of the Countess (“Più docile io sono, e dico di sì”) sadly rang out, clashing against the reconciling words of the woman. A sense of bitterness lingers in the air, which would later be embodied in Don Giovanni and in the disenchant of Così fan tutte.
Yutaka Sado conducted the Orchestra of Teatro Regio often at a very slow pace, which often sounded a bit exasperating (especially in “Se vuol ballare, signor contino”). This did not really reflect the vitality of the bubbly Mozartian score (where at least the overture and the end should be executed with double-quick tempo, in order to highlight the whirlwind of the plot which trails all the characters in “this day of torments, caprices and madness”).