A Bridge to an Operatic Future

Arriving at Lorenzo da Ponte’s birthplace, what more exciting thing could happen than to see an opera whose libretto he wrote performed in a theatre bearing his name?

The Marriage of Figaro was performed at the Teatro Lorenzo da Ponte by a brilliant young international cast. Figaro was Nicolò Donini, Italian; Susanna, Emily Christina Loftus, Welsh; the Count, Tim Alexander, English; the Countess, Monica McGhee, Scottish; Cherubino, Oryna Veselovska, Ukrainian; Bartolo, Alessandro Branchi, Italian; Marcellina, Olivia Rose Tringham, English; Basilio, Rhydian Jenkins, Welsh; Antonio, Ludovico Dal Pra, Italian; Don Curzio, Enrico Basso, Italian; and Barbarina, Anaïs Manz, Swiss. They were accompanied by the Venice Chamber Orchestra, conducted by Pietro Semenzato.
The production was absolutely delightful, and the theatre itself brought back memories. Many years ago it was a cinema, and it was here that we saw Bertolucci’s The Last Emperor.

It was a considerable change from our night at the Arena in Verona a few days earlier. The Da Ponte theatre is clearly a much smaller venue and far more intimate, with warm, immediate acoustics. And the padded seats are certainly more comfortable than the marble ones we suffered at the Arena, even though we did take our cushions to Verona!
But what struck me most was once again just how extraordinary The Marriage of Figaro is, and how brilliant the collaboration between Da Ponte and Mozart was. Da Ponte himself writes about it in his fascinating, if sometimes controversial, memoirs. As he says no sooner had he written a scene than Mozart immediately began setting it to music. And the whole work was done in six weeks flat.
Da Ponte’s remarkable life eventually took him to New York, which we visited earlier this year, where he became an important teacher and promoter of the Italian language and culture thus becoming a precursor of the Italian Cultural Institute, the London branch of which was once the home of my wife whose father was the Institute’s Secretary General.
The singers were all excellent with clear, discretely ornamented vocal lines and well enunciated words. The orchestra was equally good, giving the opera tremendous energy and zest. I particularly enjoyed the balance between strings (excellent pizzicati of which there are a lot in this opera) and wind where Mozart uses flute, clarinet and oboe to enchanting effect.
Of Mozart’s three Da Ponte operas, Figaro remains my favourite. First performed in 1786, it seems to me the ultimate caviar-and-champagne year for Mozart.
And it is an opera about much more than screwball-like comedy. Its great theme is forgiveness: people behaving badly, deceiving one another, making mistakes and eventually having to forgive each other. Nowhere is this more moving than in the final moments of the fourth act, when the hectic music suddenly becomes reflective and we arrive at that extraordinary perdono — forgiveness.
Isn’t it a miracolous moment!
Don Giovanni, which followed, is perhaps more dramatic and certainly darker. Although it is a dramma giocoso, there is something distinctly strange and sinister about it. And Così fan tutte has, as everybody says, some of Mozart’s most beautiful music, even if its plot can seem rather silly.
But for me, Figaro wins.
I was particularly fascinated by the fact that this was such a young cast. These weren’t established international opera stars, but young artists at the beginning of their professional careers, coming from Academy 1749 (the year of Da Ponte’s birth) an academy designed to take singers from the end of their formal studies into the world of professional opera.but its philosophy seems to be that becoming a professional singer involves much more than simply having a good voice. Young artists have to learn what it means to perform, to work internationally and to deal with the realities of a professional stage.
It reminded me of something my university contemporary David Conway helps create with Hampstead Garden Opera – of which he is a trustee – and where we have seen several performances of remarkably high quality and emphatically original staging.
And it made me think about the particular qualities of young singers. They may not yet have the polish or particular panache of famous, established stars, but they have something else: enthusiasm, freshness and voices that have not yet been shaped by years of performing. There is an excitement in hearing singers who are still discovering what they can do.
That freshness was very evident in this Marriage of Figaro. It was, in a sense, exactly what Figaro should be: a youthful cast bringing youthful energy to one of the greatest opere buffe ever written.
And what a setting! To hear Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro, with its libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, in the Teatro Lorenzo da Ponte, in Da Ponte’s own hometown, was an absolute coup de théâtre in itself.