.png)
5 hours ago
8
I am not one of those performers who has spent their life on a theatre stage or film set thinking, “I wish I could direct this”. However, earlier this year, I found myself with an unexpected six-week gap. A scheduled project had been delayed for technical reasons, and it was at this time that Wild Arts’ producer Max Parfitt asked how well I knew The Marriage of Figaro.
I have lived with Mozart’s opera for as long as I can remember. Susanna’s “Deh, Vieni Non Tardar” was one of the first major arias I sang, aged 12 or 13, while studying in Los Angeles. Later, I wrote my final high school paper on Figaro, the adaptation from Beaumarchais’s play to Da Ponte’s libretto. I even translated the entire score word for word, which is probably why I still know it so deeply. My Metropolitan Opera debut at 19 was in Figaro, singing Barbarina. I performed my first Susanna on the same New York stage a few years later, and I’ve since sung the role many times all over the world.
“I could sing it in my sleep!” I joked to Max. I think he suspected that already. He asked if I might consider directing a new production of Figaro. Conductor Orlando Jopling had written a reduced 10-person chamber orchestra version, there was a minimal set, an even more minimal budget and 20 wildly different venues across a three-month summer UK tour.
“Wow … I hadn’t really thought about directing,” I said. Working with a director – and I’ve been fortunate enough to work with some amazing ones, from mentors like Jonathan Miller to Richard Eyre and Robert Carsen – is one of the collaborations I treasure most and one of the most intimate relationships in the rehearsal room. Why would I want to change sides? But then I reflected. When I do masterclasses, I spend time with singers, walking them through how to perform, how to let the thoughts guide them and be the emotional driver of the music rather than a passenger on the page. Maybe I could direct, I thought. When you’re well established in a career, opportunities to turn your skill sets to something totally new are rare.
Should I try? What’s the worst that can happen? It’ll go wrong? I won’t be good?
In any case, I don’t want to be a full-time director, I thought. I have an amazing day job performing around the world, often in new productions and new creative projects. My mother, Beverly, always told us children to “Dare to dream” and I have lived this mantra every day of my career. It would be better to try to fail then never to try at all, I thought. And so I agreed.
Because this opera is in my DNA, my preparation wasn’t about studying the notes, but about reimagining them from the perspective of shaping the piece character by character, as opposed to performing, where you can only contribute your part in the greater whole.
Knowing the parameters that were already in place (multiple venues meaning the set has to be minimal and adaptable, not least) there was no chance I was going to set it in outer space or in a modern Parisian penthouse. My Figaro is set in the 18th century, the time it was written. But whatever the period, for me the most important thing is that every character has to be realistic, and everything they do has to make complete sense. As a stage performer, I can’t do anything unless I understand who my character is and why she makes the decisions she does.
I hate the idea of falling into tropes and a well-worn tread just because that’s how it’s always done. I think Figaro has many such tropes. The Count is often played as a bit of a buffoon. His household runs rings round him, he’s always the last to know what’s going on. Cherubino, too, the young page, is supposed to be anywhere between 13 and maybe 17, but quite often you’ll find he’s played as a gangly overexcited female version of a boy not quite in control of his limbs who moons around swinging his arms and making silly pouty faces. Even singers who have never done the role before will start with some of these habits.
I want to make it all feel less pantomimic. Yes, Figaro is a comedy, a farce even, but the plausibility of the plot depends on every singer portraying their character and each plot action believably. If one person doesn’t then the dominoes will fall. From the very first note of the overture, every moment needs to have coherence and tension.
The opera’s final scene – where the Count asks for the Countess’s forgiveness – is an incredibly poignant one, but in quite a few productions it’s entirely possible you will hear titters in the audience. How is it possible that a selfish comic lout could sincerely ask for forgiveness with Mozart’s heartbreaking music? For an audience to believe in and be moved by that moment a director needs to draw that possibility into the Count from his very first appearance. You have to thread it backwards.
Performing Susanna myself, I always felt you only have 10 minutes to get the audience to fall in love with her and Figaro – two duets and two recitatives, and if you just perform them as introductions, how is the audience going to care about their managing to get married? Whatever production I was in, I wanted my Susanna and Figaro to really look like a couple who are in love so the audience invest in them and their happiness as they try to navigate the difficulties that come their way.
As an interpreter myself, I’ve been able to coach the singers on delivery, to make sure everything is communicated with phrasing and meaning and remembering that no lines can be delivered on the “I know it’s my line next” autopilot. Singing in the English language will mean that British audiences will have the potential to notice any poor delivery. Every gesture, every raised eyebrow, every pause and every word will count.
A great live performance can transform you from spectator to participant. That’s my biggest hope for this production, and to be taking such a leap into the unknown at this stage in an established performing career is a little daunting, but totally fascinating. And it has been great fun to come up with inventive ways to use four boxes, six screens, four chairs and a tree – I took my son’s old building blocks, cut scrap paper into pieces to stick on as sides and experimented with turning each side to make different bits of the set.
Orlando and I recently did an interview together. “Figaro is a perfect opera. It’s hard to mess it up,” I said. Orlando countered, “Figaro is a perfect opera; it’s hard to get it right!” We laughed and had a lively debate on camera. What I meant is that the music is so perfect and beloved, how bad can it really go? But therein lies the challenge. People can easily enjoy a night of Figaro even if you perform it with all its traditional tropes. But that’s not where I orbit. The real challenge – and the real joy – is going beyond the well-trodden path of cliche to tell a story that is not only comedic and touching, but perilous and, most importantly, plausibly real.
Wild Arts’ production of The Marriage of Figaro directed by Danielle de Niese opens at Layer Marney Tower, Essex, on 5 June, before touring across the England and Wales until 27 September.
Danielle de Niese was talking to Imogen Tilden
