The Marriage of Figaro – Marcus Portugal

Figaro Nicholas Merryweather  Susanna Emily Rowley Jones  Marcellina Cara Curran

Dr Bartolo Mark Saberton  Cherubino Joana Seara

Don Basilio Robert Winslade Anderson

Rosina, Countess Almaviva Lisa Wilson  Count Almaviva John-Colyn Gyeantey

Antonio Nicholas Morris Cecchina Caroline Kennedy  Gusmano Robert Gildon

Director/Designer Jeremy Gray  Revival Director Nicola Samer

Conductor Robin Newton Costume designer Fiona Hodges

Lighting designer John Bishop

A production by Bampton Classical Opera with the Northern Chamber Orchestra

Why you might wonder would anyone write a Marriage of Figaro after Mozart’s version of the Beaumarchais….a question to be honest Marcos Portugal doesn’t actually answer altogether convincingly. That said i had a great night and this was one of the highlights of this Buxton Festival.

Marcos Portugal composed in the 1780s through to first decade of the nineteenth century. At that time his operas were more popular than Mozart or Haydn. He was up there with Salieri, Cimarosa (Italian girl in London) and that other icon of his age Paisiello – who  in addition to composing the music for  Napoleon I’s coronation also  composed a Barber of Seville over shadowed by Gioachino Rossini’s subsequent opera of the same name and based on the first of the Beaumarchais plays.

This actually rather neatly brings us back to Portugal’s opera. his Figaro has a different libretto to da Ponti and is spare of characterisation  -though he gives both Figaro (well sung by Nicholas Merryweather) and Susannah (brilliantly given by Emily Rowley Jones)  some stunning music the best parts are those written for ensemble – duets, trios, quartets, quintets, sextets, octets etc…but perhaps most interestingly at the end of Act I Portugal whips the scene in the bedroom of the countess with a finale that can only be described as vividly in the style we associate with Rossini. And this written a full decade before Rossini embarks on his extraordinary career.  The Don Basilio of Robert Winslade Anderson was a little gem of a performance – making much of some slender music.

The second Act seemed to struggle more with Mozart’s ghost and though there was some genuinely lovely music there is nothing quite to touch the wonder of Mozart’s heavenly final reconciliation of the Count and Countess in the garden. Similarly though Portugal was fluent in the language of the high classical operatic form and had moved considerably beyond the static confines of recitative and aria his characters lacked the fluency, personality and perhaps humanity which Mozart almost uniquely of these great Enlightenment composers routinely invested in his stage creations in his last four operas. In particular Portugal makes very little of the countess –  in contrast to Mozart who lavishes on her two of opera’s greatest arias, Porge amour and Dove sono…

But on a small budget we had great sets, clever lighting, good costumes for at least half of the characters.

Buxton did Marcos Portugal proud and I for one would happily pay to go and see and hear another of his operas as a result of this Derbyshire debut.

As an additional comment Paisiello’s Barber of Seville is something well worth your attention being very much deserving of a full and proper place in the performing repertory of the worlds great opera houses – in my altogether humble opinion…..