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Nov. 18th, 2014 04:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
seekingferretI realized I never wrote anything about the Met's new Marriage of Figaro production. It is excellent, though not, I think, as excellent as their old production.
The problem was a weird logistical one: The new set attempted to encapsulate the whole house in a single moving set, oriented in three directions on the Met's massive turntable. By means of this device, in theory, the set could move seamlessly from Abovestairs to Belowstairs, as it were, as Mozart's music and Da Ponte's libretto nimbly do the same.
The set itself was gorgeous- modelled after the lusciously furnished home in Jean Renoir's comic masterpiece La Règle du jeu, and the opening overture was masterfully staged as Count Almavivo's lusty pursuit of Susanna through the corridors of his home, as the house rotated on stage to keep up, and it had me anticipatorily excited for how dynamic a staging was possible on the set. Unfortunately, it got duller as it went on.
The problem was that the set needed to be moving to be interesting. If it was static, it took up so much of the stage that it actually crowded the singers into a narrower area than they would ordinarily have on the Met's massive stage. The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy, and much of the comedy comes from characters chasing each other, hiding from each other, disguising themselves from each other. To work well, it depends on movement and it depends on creative advantage being taken of the set- the audience should be surprised as commonplace items serve purposes they didn't predict for them. The crowded sets just didn't have enough space for this to be as dynamic as it was in the Met's old production design. And after that brilliant overture, the rotating set, which had promised ways to open up that space in really exciting ways, barely moved.
Still, it's fucking Figaro. The music was great, the singing was great, and the story was great. I had a fantastic time, and this post is mostly me being cranky.
The problem was a weird logistical one: The new set attempted to encapsulate the whole house in a single moving set, oriented in three directions on the Met's massive turntable. By means of this device, in theory, the set could move seamlessly from Abovestairs to Belowstairs, as it were, as Mozart's music and Da Ponte's libretto nimbly do the same.
The set itself was gorgeous- modelled after the lusciously furnished home in Jean Renoir's comic masterpiece La Règle du jeu, and the opening overture was masterfully staged as Count Almavivo's lusty pursuit of Susanna through the corridors of his home, as the house rotated on stage to keep up, and it had me anticipatorily excited for how dynamic a staging was possible on the set. Unfortunately, it got duller as it went on.
The problem was that the set needed to be moving to be interesting. If it was static, it took up so much of the stage that it actually crowded the singers into a narrower area than they would ordinarily have on the Met's massive stage. The Marriage of Figaro is a comedy, and much of the comedy comes from characters chasing each other, hiding from each other, disguising themselves from each other. To work well, it depends on movement and it depends on creative advantage being taken of the set- the audience should be surprised as commonplace items serve purposes they didn't predict for them. The crowded sets just didn't have enough space for this to be as dynamic as it was in the Met's old production design. And after that brilliant overture, the rotating set, which had promised ways to open up that space in really exciting ways, barely moved.
Still, it's fucking Figaro. The music was great, the singing was great, and the story was great. I had a fantastic time, and this post is mostly me being cranky.