Unity, intimacy lacking in 'Marriage of Figaro'

As I watched the opening night performance of IU Opera Theatre's "The Marriage of Figaro" at the Musical Arts Center Friday, I hoped that I would experience Mozart's immaculate score in all its brilliance with the added joy of seeing it staged.\nIn the famed scene from the film "Amadeus," we see a first performance of "Figaro" where the character of Salieri has an experience elevated by Mozart's divine score and marred by Salieri's own jealousy. As he both recognizes the voice of God and prays for failure, his wish becomes a reality when the Emperor yawns in the fourth act. The difference between our two experiences is that I longed only for divinity, but unfortunately my first yawn came in Act II.\nMy heart initially dropped when the first word from Figaro was "fifteen" rather than "cinque." Lorenzo da Ponte's splendid Italian libretto could not even play its usual supporting role to Mozart's score. The poetry and fluidity of the verse could never translate into English. The mixture of cultural styles in this production is almost as confusing as the opera's farcical complexities. Here we had a French play translated into Italian and done in Italian opera buffa style by a Viennese composer which takes place in Spain being sung in English. Confusing, to say the least.\nAfter Maestro Imre Pallo's at times Beethovian interpretation of the overture, the curtain rose on a huge foyer set for the beginning of the intimate opera. I say "intimacy" purely because of the nature of the characterization -- 11 integral characters -- and because the show utilized a small chorus and small orchestra complement. But in this case, a sense of intimacy was lost in the cavernous sets and period design.\nFrom that point forward, the opera went about trying to emerge in some form of its true self amid a labyrinth of production elements that nearly sent Mozart to the background of events.\nPlacing "Figaro" in the period creates a limitation of presentation allowing for only a comedy of manners. Today, comedy has to be a combination of the visual and visceral.\nBecause of the period style, there was very little movement; every moment seemed directed out to no one in particular and the singers sang, without emotion most of the time, to the air rather than to or about someone -- very bland.\nNearly perfect musically, "Figaro" should easily sustain an audience for three and a half hours on sheer musical intrigue. But to have it staged should mean that those three hours are meaningless, for the added visual and human emotional aspect make those hours seamless. This was, unfortunately, not the case with this production.\nInterjecting intermissions just as the pace was starting to pick up at the end of the first and second acts snapped the spirit of Mozart from me like a tightrope artist on fishing wire.\nThe one exception to this was graduate student Kimberly Gratland-James, whose singing of Cherubino was a casting choice that was made in heaven. Because of her similar, but wholly smaller role in last year's "Faust," she was destined to play Cherubino and she soared with it, playing the devilish page to the farthest reaches she possibly could under the circumstances.\nIt is exciting to experience the vitality of a live performance of a favorite opera, but it can be scary as well if the performance is lifeless. Staged singings do not operas make (no matter how beautifully they are sung) and money can be saved in terms of costumes and sets if a well sung opera is what we receive. An empty stage, an orchestra and chairs for the singers would suffice.\nI hoped to see "Le Nozze di Figaro," but what I saw was a version of the opera's alternate title: "The Follies of a Day"