Le nozze di Figaro
Photo: Nina Westervelt ©
“ Let Ceccarelli be sometimes a man and sometimes woman […] we could get Metastasio to come over from Vienna, or at least make him an offer, to write a few dozen opera texts in which the primo upmost and the prima donna would never meet. In this way the castrato could play the parts of both the lover and his mistress and the story would be even more interesting.”
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
“Here on display is the paradox of opera: As a form, it could hardly be more absurd, more flagrantly artificial, and yet the whole precarious, glittering edifice rests atop a real miracle of the human body.”
Sara Holdren,Vulture
Photo: Nina Westervelt ©
Le nozze di Figaro
Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro is already a strange opera. One of his three collaborations with the master librettist Lorenzo da Ponte, here Mozart mixes opera seria, opera buffa, and the sentimentality of the age to create a searing critique of class and power that resonates powerfully today.
In classic buffa fashion, the plot knots itself into tightly bound imbroglio, with gender-swapping characters (thrice, in the case of Cherubino), duplicitous and duplicated subplots, and endlessly additive ensemble numbers.
For this 2024 production at Little Island, we take seriously Mozart’s quip that a castrato could sing both the male and female lines, and here Anthony Roth Costanzo is Le nozze di Figaro, one man singing every part of Mozart’s greatest operatic masterpiece. A weird opera just got weirder.
Creative Team
Director: Dustin Wills
Musical Director: Dan Schlossberg
Producer: Zack Winokur
Dramaturg: Jacob Mallinson Bird
Photo: Nina Westervelt ©
Praise for Le nozze di Figaro
“With its frenetic, accelerating energy and constant switching of focus, this “Figaro” exemplifies the opera’s revolutionary, topsy-turvy roots—the servants get the upper hand over the aristocracy—expressed through high comedy.”
“Costanzo, who recently took over Opera Philadelphia and who seems to pop up almost any time something rad is happening in the opera world, sings every role in this Figaro himself. The show is his baby, gestated with the dramaturg Jacob Mallinson Bird and delivered with mad-scientist zeal by the inexhaustible director Dustin Wills. Rounding out the brain trust is musical director Dan Schlosberg, who helps to bring the whole thing in under 90 minutes by brilliantly slimming down the arrangement for an eight-piece orchestra, which he conducts with ferocity and precision from behind the keyboard. Virtuosity abounds.”
“Yes, opera really can be this much fun.”