2023-07-28 12:29:08
Mozart’s classic with lots of pistols and powder in the nose: This interpretation triggered a boo and bravo duel at the Salzburg Festival. Director Kusej remains under pressure.
Salzburg.
Is classical music bearable only with drugs? Director Martin Kusej may have given some viewers this impression at the Salzburg Festival when he had his ensemble sniff, swallow and inject all sorts of substances during the overture to Mozart’s “Le Nozze di Figaro” (“The Marriage of Figaro”). In the first opera premiere of this festival season, Kusej transferred the drama of love and jealousy between nobility and servants to a mafia-type city environment in which conflicts are fought with pistols.
At the end of the premiere on Thursday evening, the audience also dueled: when Kusej entered the stage, the audience fired boos and bravos at him. While the directorial concept was divided, unanimous applause spilled over the singers’ lyrical and emotional interpretations.
Lone fighters looking for quick eroticism
“Of course, I always hear Mozart’s utopia, the ideal, a kind of longing that’s being sung about, and at the same time it’s always music that’s fragile, that tells other things subliminally,” Kusej said before the premiere. The characters in “Figaro” are lone fighters looking for “the quick kick, the quick eroticism”.
This part of his concept worked, mainly thanks to Lea Desandre, who obviously had fun as the androgynous page Cherubino on stage, turning the heads of the Countess Almaviva, her maid Susanna and the young Barbarina. Kusey’s decision to turn the jealous Count Almaviva, his valet Figaro and his other servants into a mafia clan was less convincing. In the process, the tension was lost that arises in the original material of “Figaro” from the power relations between rulers and subordinates and from the subversive reversal of these relations.
The guns are loose
In a scenery of faceless lobbies, adjoining rooms and back entrances (stage design: Raimund Orfeo Voigt), Kusej instead relied on symbols of sexualised violence, some of which were overly obvious. In addition to loose-fitting pistols, young girls were seen smearing blood on windows, or half-naked men sneaking across the stage with skinned deer over their shoulders.
It’s hardly surprising that Kusej wasn’t in the mood to deliver a light-footed “Figaro”. The renowned Austrian director had recently come under pressure on several fronts. Last December, he withdrew his application for another term as artistic director of the state-run Burgtheater in Vienna after he said he had lost the trust of politicians. In January, the Burgtheater made negative headlines when ensemble star Florian Teichtmeister was accused of possessing child pornography.
Applause for the great singing
The singers, on the other hand, delivered carefree things at the premiere. The Guatemalan soprano Adriana González earned spontaneous applause during the performance for her emotionally charged and heartfelt interpretation of the Countess. Although Lea Desandre’s finely spun mezzo-soprano was not always able to assert itself against the Vienna Philharmonic and the original sound specialist Raphaël Pichon on the podium, it delighted the audience with masterful pianissimo passages and a lot of joy in playing. Pichon’s wife Sabine Devieilhe shone with her bright and clear sparkling soprano as Susanna.
Krzysztof Baczyk successfully used his full bass in the title role. Especially in the recitative passages, he managed to characterize the figure of Figaro as both angry and humorous. Baritone Andrè Schuen as Count Almaviva, on the other hand, needed until the fourth act before he got going, both vocally and as an actor. Kusej’s direction repeatedly stood in the way of the two main actors. For example, during an aria, Schuen was dressed from stockings to a suit by an extra, who was naked except for her underpants – while the audience was busy looking at or away, the attention for the singing suffered. (dpa)
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