The great joys of Mozart in Mormon country
Never a dull moment in Salt Lake City, home to the famous Mormon Tabernacle Choir, and HQ of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. Especially not when going to see The Marriage of Figaro.
First, an afternoon of pure joy at a dazzling production of Fiddler on the Roof at the Mountain America Performing Arts Centre, the Hale Theatre. Note: In Utah they spell “centre” and “theatre” correctly.
Maybe it’s laid down in the Book of Mormon. Certainly, when Brigham Young instructed the building of a home for the local Mechanics’ Dramatic Association in 1861, they eventually moved from their former Bowring’s “Theater” pad to the Salt Lake “Theatre” in 1862.
Hale Theatre, in the city’s suburbs, was fantastic. In the round, with a stage that elevated or sank at will, scenery that descended dramatically from the heights, walkways that extended or retracted, Tevye’s bed that flew rakishly and a local cast singing a story of tragic forced migration matching that day’s news from abroad in The Salt Lake Tribune.
Straight from Anatevka, Ukraine to Seville, Spain – actually, downtown Salt Lake City – and Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. One of the best operas ever written. It has to be. The Countess’ aria Dove Sono in Act III is the most poignant turning point of any opera I have seen.
Five notes only, in an opening phrase, draw us into her world of despair. C, D, C, B, C. That’s all. I could play that sequence on the piano all day and it would sound like – nothing. Mozart’s stroke of genius, holding the first C for three beats, then proceeding at a steady one beat settling pace is all it takes to make this entrance, the aria, and the whole opera, unforgettable.
The countess talks of, then resolves not to accept her fate as aggrieved spouse and finally exits the aria at a confident romp in that triumphant C major key. The whole track of the opera is changed and moves inexorably from there towards her husband’s confabulation at the hands of spouse and servants.
Stage Director, Tara Faircloth, gave Salt Lake City’s operagoers a Figaro to die for. Die laughing. Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro, libretto by his best collaborator, Lorenzo da Ponte, delivers a hypersonic missile targeted at sexual exploitation. Never flops. Not like Britain’s Trident.
But the explosive warhead is nuclear comedy, based on impersonation, misunderstanding, deception and ultimately the demasking of that ultimate betrayer, Count Almaviva.
He’s worse than Don Giovanni in my book. Almaviva, a lady’s maid chaser, is up there with Harvey Weinstein in the casting couch/employee exploitation stakes. In the dying moments of the work, he seeks his Countess’ pardon – Contessa perdono – to which she graciously accedes. But we’re not stupid. The audience understands that this is, in modern parlance, “temporary closure”.
Why the Weinstein allusion? A few days after my mission to Salt Lake City I was lunching at Michael’s restaurant, West 55th Street Manhattan. Terrific Cobb Salad. In season, soft shell crab… mmm. A favourite joint. Not least because proprietor, Michael, would grace any operatic stage with aplomb. When he is on form – most of the time – Michael creates New York’s five-star ristorante buffa experience.
Back in his day – the mid ’90s – Weinstein regularly exercised his droit de directeur over a table centre stage, backed up against a narrow, mirrored pillar. Almost every time I dropped in, there he was, always with only one guest, a slightly shy Susanna-type hopeful looking for that Hollywood break. I reflected that if ever a classic opera was perfectly honed as a present-day morality tale The Marriage of Figaro is it.
Faircloth has Figaro form. Later, she told me this is her fifth production. The setting is in the 20th century with a Downton Abbey look. A neat simile for late 18th century Seville, akin to Richard Eyre’s 2015 production set in 1930’s Seville for New York’s Met.
The synopsis, for newbies, is available here.
“Figaro here, Figaro there, Figaro every bloody where” – to parody the famous The Barber of Sevillearia, Rossini’s 19th-century prequel to Mozart’s opera. Both works are staples of the repertoire. Remember the Rossini Chicago-set outing in Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia last autumn? It is easy to change the setting – time and location – of either work. Much more difficult to bring a fresh, interpretive eye.
That is exactly what Faircloth did. From the measuring of Figaro and Susanna’s marital bed, through Cherubino jumping through windows, drunken gardeners with broken flowerpots, the almost casual discovery of Figaro’s parents, Doctor Bartolo and Marcellina, she creepily plotting to marry him, and on to the chaos of mistaken identities in the final Act IV garden scene, the director from Houston, Texas never lost an opportunity to exploit the comedic potential of the libretto.
Like the best of Mozart’s music, it sounds so simple to do. Exaggerate gestures, show expressions of “shock, horror”, have Cherubino and the Count perform a chaotic chair jumping performance in Act I, generate an air of complex confusion throughout, especially when hiding behind flowerpots in the dark garden finale.
In reality, it’s very difficult to pull off with precision as the whole dramatic performance risks crumbling on the stage should any of the cast put a foot, a facial expression, or a sideways look wrong. Rehearsal time at houses such as Utah Opera is scarce. A couple of weeks at the most. Yet all the cast had mastered every nuance. Timing was perfect.
The clincher innovation was consistently breaking the fourth wall, ensuring the cast made eye contact with the audience. There was never any doubt about who was up to what. Maybe less subtle than in more ambiguous productions. But, boy, did this work.
The audience got it. I have never heard such laughter from a Figaro crowd. The surtitles were rendered almost redundant. They followed the laughter rather than leading it.
That said, this was a risky strategy in the homeland of Mormon propriety. Some audience members I spoke to took strong exception to the comical sexual gestures that peppered the action. I saw nothing to which the most prudish Met Opera intimacy coach could object. Wozzeck would not have gone down well,
The cast was strong, the standout being American baritone, Michael Adams. His combination of effortless delivery and comedic timing matched Faircloth’s directorial demands perfectly. Adams anchored the show.
Connor Gray Covington conducted the Utah Symphony, with precision at a cracking pace. The Symphony, founded in 1940 merged with Utah Opera in 1978. It must make a huge difference to the quality of the overall performance to have the orchestra’s skills permanently on tap.
I noticed that Faircloth had translated the supertitles – into sassy English! Her sense of humour flowed into sharp, colloquial one-liners augmenting the mood of hilarity onstage.
Buffa the opera may be, but anything originally banned by the Viennese censor, criticising the power of the overmighty, and forged by French campaigning playwright Beaumarchais could never be characterised as “slight”. So, was Salt Lake City’s Figaro over-buffa’d, blunting its uncomfortable, serious cutting edges?
Not at all. Faircloth, with her extensive experience across the USA, Lyric Opera of Chicago, Houston Grand Opera, Central City Opera – that bizarre Colorado mining town gem – and Dallas Opera never let the action degenerate into slapstick.
Utah Opera has experience of Faircloth’s style. She directed Rachel Portman and Nicholas Wright’s The Little Prince in Salt Lake City in January this year. But that’s not really a work demanding much media coach attention. Not unless you object to budding princesses being encouraged to sprout by a watering-can wielding little boy. These days, someone will.
Next up in May is Massenet’s Thaïs, allocated a PG rating. Sensitive souls stay home. Utah Opera has just announced its 24/25 season. Sondheim and Wheeler’s Sweeney Todd, Humperdinck’s Hansel and Gretel, Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly.
Butterfly is a new fantastical production from an all-Japanese and Japanese American creative team, led by director, Matthew Ozawa. It shows first in Pittsburgh in March 2025, Salt Lake City in May.
The Marriage of Figaro is only the second piece in the Beaumarchais trilogy jigsaw. French composer Darius Milhaud, wrote the third opera in the trilogy in 1966. La Mère Coupable, is dark, even twisted. Not a buffa in sight.
Milhaud’s adaptation is generally considered an interesting failure, excessively talky and too heavily scored. But that didn’t scare off Eric Einhorn, New York’s On Site Opera’s artistic director. The work was performed in 2017, reviewed by the New Yorker.
Triumph? Does not seem so. “We’ve had past success in producing pieces that have gotten historically bad press from more traditional presentations,” Einhorn mourned, citing the company’s production of Gershwin’s Blue Monday, staged at the Cotton Club in 2013.
Call Faircloth. I have every confidence that given her pitch-perfect interpretation of Figaro in Salt Lake City she could transform La Mère Coupable into La Mère Sympathique. Just find a new librettist, cast Béagarss as a limerick-chanting buffoon, sort the surtitles and we’re off to the races.
Fortunately, Tara Faircloth has more important work to do.
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