The Marriage of Figaro
By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte
English Translation by Jeremy Sams

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“…Opera Theater lovingly stages charming Figaro…  smartly conceived and energetically performed… consistently fine acting was another dimension of Eaton's directorial mastery…  a rewarding production that raced to the final curtain.”

Mark Kanny, Pittsburgh Tribune Review

Fresh from his successful Magic Flute at the Benedum, Artistic Director Jonathan Eaton creates this lusty production of The Marriage of Figaro. This bawdy tale of love between servant and master, wife and lover is sung in English.
It's an operatic jewel!

Tuesday, September 25, 2007 at 7:30 P.M.
Friday, September 28, 2007 at 7:30 P.M.
Saturday, September 29, 2007 at 8:00 P.M.
Sunday, September 30, 2007 at 2:00 P.M.

Byham Theater, in Pittsburgh's Downtown Cultural District!
101 Sixth Street
Pittsburgh, PA 15222

Jonathan Eaton, Director
Bernard McDonald, Conductor

Cast

Countess Almaviva

Count Almaviva

Susanna, servant to Countess

Figaro, Count’s valet

Cherubino, aristocratic page boy

Marcellina, formerly Countess' governess

Bartolo, a lawyer

Don Basilio, music master

Antonio, the Count’s gardener

Don Curzio, the Count’s lawyer

Barbarina, Antonio’s daughter

Flower Maiden

LAURA KNOOP VERY

CRAIG VERM

AUDREY LUNA

HERBERT PERRY

CARLA DIRLIKOV

ANNA SINGER

MILUTIN LAZICH

ROBERT FRANKENBERRY

JASON KAMINSKI

ENRIQUE BERNARDO

JO ELLEN MILLER

EMILY LORINI

The Production Team

Set Designer: JONATHAN EATON

Lighting Designer: SCOTT HAY

Costume Designer: ERIN COLLINS RITTLING

Chorus Master: STEPHEN NEELY

Director's Notes

Napoleon said of Beaumarchais' play, The Marriage of Figaro, that it was the first canon shot fired in the French Revolution. He was referring to the work's revolutionary take on a class conflict where virtuous servants appear to get the better of corrupt aristocrats.The play (and later the opera) was banned through much of Europe because of its socially subversive plot. In later years, many audiences have enjoyed this masterpiece and seen in it a different conflict: the war between the sexes.

This production sees something else in the mix as well: the way in which, in human relations (particularly between the sexes), a certain wildness, or chaos, or untrammeled force of nature, can subvert the best of intentions, and turn the most organized of societies upside down. Chaos undermines Order, Nature seduces Reason, Passion outbids Morality. These timeless struggles make the work as provocative now as it was when it first took the stage towards the end of the eighteenth century.

I personally think the opera is the high point of Western Civilization. Man has achieved nothing greater before or since (though Americans flying to the moon comes a close second). The opera is also a comedy, though one with rich and sometimes dark undertones, and comedy always plays best in the language of its audience. That is why Opera Theater has chosen to perform it in English, an approach which has become radically out of fashion in our world of opera these days. We leave you, the audience, to judge whether this gives you an enhanced enjoyment of this marvelous work, described in its subtitle as "the craziness of a single day."

-Jonathan Eaton