This second part of Welsh National Opera’s continuing Figaro Forever trilogy goes some way to making up for the deficit left by The Barber of Seville, but even Mozart’s perfect opera gets its share of directorial contrivance. For supposed contemporary resonance to balance the period costume, Tobias Richter adds the framing device of a play within a play, whose director sings the role of Figaro. It may be intended to underline the latter’s status as the man calling the tune, the character who does most to subvert the old social order, but nothing much is gained. Bright and breezy baritone David Stout would have been better unencumbered by extraneous business and, ironically, he is outclassed by Mark Stone’s Count Almaviva.
The biggest plus factor in this staging is the exceptional Susanna of Anna Devin: she has a natural charisma, her soprano blending clarity and bloom. She coped brilliantly with the whirlwind tempi that conductor Lothar Koenigs inflicted on the first two acts; he brought a calmer expressivity after the interval. Elizabeth Watts, once herself a delightful Susanna for WNO and now graduated to the Countess, displayed her maturing tone and insight into a wife’s anguish at living with a pathological lecher. The ensemble work was pretty slick: Watts and Devin’s exchanges with Naomi O’Connell’s frenetic Cherubino most lively and those of Marcellina (Susan Bickley predictably good and permitted her aria) with Richard Wiegold’s Bartolo and Alan Oke’s Basilio also got laughs.
Ralph Koltai has designed simple and elegant sets for the whole trilogy, though there’s still too much wall-shifting, with awkwardly am-dram furnishings for the Countess’s bedroom.
And the whiff of explosive revolution? There are some rockets, but the blue touch paper doesn’t get ignited – perhaps a metaphor for the whole show.
• At Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff, until 26 February. Box office: 029-2063 6464. Then touring until 9 April.
