The superbly located Amphitheater at Little Island, a hanging artifical park jutting into the Hudson River close to the southern entrance to the Excessive Line, has been presenting performances all this summer season. Its first season’s world premiere closing attraction, working via 22 September, is described on the venue’s web site as “A brand new and radical tackle Mozart’s traditional about class and gender, multi function voice. Anthony Roth Costanzo performs each main position in The Marriage of Figaro.”
The verb “is” was once more closely emphasised when Dan Schlosberg on the keyboard started main his seven musicians within the whirling overture and the projected “film titles” as soon as once more proclaimed that the peripatetic countertenor IS The Marriage of Figaro adopted by photographs of Costanzo as many (however not all) of Lorenzo da Ponte’s characters. This conceit, nonetheless, proved to be deceptive as, although he sings (closely amplified) nearly all of Schlosberg’s abridged version of the rating, he solely “performs” Cherubino (and himself) for its ultimate three-and-a-half acts.
However for the primary 20 or so minutes, Dustin Wills’s antic manufacturing options Costanzo frantically embodying each Figaro and Susanna of their opening duets significantly aided by Emily Bode’s wittily velcro-ed costumes and a number of other different speedy performers. After he performs each the Depend and Don Basilio (aided by an annoying kazoo), energetic actors completely take over as Susanna, the Depend and shortly Figaro and the Countess. All through the remainder of the 110-minute working time, they suavely lip-sync whereas Costanzo finds a whole bunch of the way to not face the viewers whereas singing his acres of music. He even tackles the numerous ensembles that dot the work, though he’s aided on a number of events by pre-recorded vocal tracks additionally, after all, that includes Costanzo.
The singer’s idea for this Figaro was apparently born many years in the past when he was doing Cherubino (normally carried out by a feminine mezzo soprano) and located himself singing via the whole rating. After Little Island creative director Zack Winokur talked about to him, “We’re considering of doing an opera, one thing everybody is aware of however no one has heard,” gobs of time and cash have been thrown at placing Costanzo’s thought on stage. However urgent questions stays: Why? Who is that this Figaro for? If audiences unfamiliar with Figaro (all Little Island tickets are budget-priced at simply $25) have been being focused, why no synopsis or introduction to the idea within the digital program and why was present sung in Italian with two screens projecting the English translation?
In a “too little, too late” gesture, in the course of the very awkward pause between the second and third acts, an actor raced via an extended and windy précis in English of what we had simply seen which then led (much more confusingly) to the performers enjoying Susanna and the Depend campily performing a scene from the opera’s Beaumarchais supply—in French!
For these intimately accustomed to Mozart and da Ponte’s work, what, if something, did the night give us? Schlosberg has lengthy been the music director of the splendidly ingenious Heartbeat Opera which presents difficult productions of traditional works in abridged editions with diminished orchestrations. Though there have been some awkward transitions (and the characters of Marcellina and Don Bartolo have been omitted utterly), he put collectively a brisk model of Figaro that struck me as extra felicitous than the godawful certainly one of Die Zauberflöte the Met trots out each December.
If the opera is certainly about “class and gender,” why was the night (no updating right here—it was all performed in 18th century costume) utterly toothless in presenting the long-simmering rage over class-iniquity that imbues each the unique play and opera? Figaro does briefly contact on it in his lengthy speech in English that additionally explains the unseen revelation about his paternity that Schlosberg’s version omits. Though the Countess was performed by man, the Depend by a lady, no illuminating feedback on gender have been forthcoming.
Finally the night got here throughout as an extravagant, costly, empty bow to Costanzo’s strutting versatility. Certainly, many points of his participation within the venture have been astonishing. Through the swift exchanges throughout last-act finale, I marveled at his capacity to shortly swap registers with such ease. To his principally pleasing traversals of each of the Countess’s arias and Susanna’s “Deh vieni non tardar” he summoned a surprisingly interesting high quality to his excessive singing which his Cherubino arias mockingly lacked. His Depend and significantly his Figaro (although “Aprite un po’ quegli occhi” was omitted) made one admire his simple baritone register, however, whereas my ears didn’t bleed, I wouldn’t ever wish to hear him sing any of this music ever once more.
The staging truly pointed up the “ego journey” side of all of it: whereas he modestly performed his elements throughout a lot of the first half, he then eagerly grabbed the highlight center-stage in the course of the miraculous second-act finale standing on a field gesturing broadly “have a look at me, aren’t I superb?!” He then collapsed at his Herculean efforts to be taken away by ambulance in search medical consideration. He then (on video feed) did the Depend’s aria flat on a stretcher after which “Dove sono” in a hospital robe dragging round an IV. These bits of enterprise might have been meant as flamboyant gestures of ironic self-deprecation, however, if that’s the case, they failed miserably.
In a form of ‘mission assertion’ that appeared in New York Journal and might need helpfully been included in this system, Costanzo opines that he “finds Figaro to be hilarious” and the night positively turned up the slapstick even to the purpose of inserting an alienating sight gag into the center of “Porgi amor!” The opera’s shifting humanity was largely ignored, although it should be stated some viewers members clearly loved themselves discovering a lot of the nonstop hijinks hilarious. I, nonetheless, thought a dispiriting enterprise that assured me of Costanzo’s insistent virtuosity however left my ears desperately hungry for Mozart sincerely and superbly carried out. Oh effectively, I suppose I turned out to be one of many “haters” that Costanzo predicted in his New York remarks. Let’s hope that his Opera Philadelphia could have higher luck together with his programming concepts than Little Island did.
Photographs: Nina Westervelt
