The New London Day
 
CLO Does Justice To Mozart With Stellar 'Figaro'
 
By Milton Moore
 
Published on 11/19/2006 in <http://www.theday.com/entertainment/music.aspx>
Entertainment > <http://www.theday.com/entertainment/music.aspx> Music
 
New London - Delights are too often fleeting, but not so Friday night on
State Street. For three delicious hours, the pleasures of Mozart's "Le Nozze
di Figaro," presented by Connecticut Lyric Opera, delighted a nearly full
house at the First Congregational Church - and, it seemed, the excellent
cast itself.
 
Few, if any, stage pieces can match Mozart's melodious farce of botched
seductions and mistaken identities for unabated brilliance, and the Lyric
Opera cast seemed to revel in it. For nearly three hours, the score's
musical momentum, variety and inventiveness never flags. And, remarkably
enough, through the three hours, the vocal power of the ensemble here Friday
seemed to grow.
 
Now in its fourth season, the company assembled a nearly ideal cast to
populate the tiny but functional stage in the church. The intimacy of the
setting, much more to the scale of the stages of Mozart's day than modern
theaters, allowed the singers to focus on technique and beauty, not volume.
 
Artistic director Adrian Mackiewicz led the 13-piece orchestra from the
continuo and....had an ideal sense of pacing and sensitivity to the
singers. The stage direction by David Jaffe - his first venture into opera -
emphasized characterization by each character, with the sort of broad asides
that befit a farce. Yet Jaffe showed his sensitivity to Mozart's singular
score in moments such as Figaro's Act 4 aria "Aprite un po quegli occhi," in
which Figaro rails against his new bride's presumed infidelity. As he
repeats the line that everyone knows women are unfaithful, a horn flourish
from the pit stuck some musical horns on Figaro, a musical pun about
cuckoldry, and Jaffe had his Figaro spin and point an accusing finger at the
orchestra.  

As the carefree Figaro, baritone Colin Brady was ebullient in voice and
manner. Like all of the principals, he projected a vibrato-free, unaffected
vocal purity. His bride, Susannah, sung by soprano Deborah Selig, was the
star throughout. In ensemble and in arias, her sense of line and nuance were
matched only by the sheer beauty of her tone and power of projection. As the
blustery Count, who spends the opera alternately chasing Susannah and trying
to placate the Contessa, baritone Timothy Hill was a consummate actor,
crucial to the ensembles both vocally and as the dramatic foil to all the
trickery.
 
The evening's finest moments belonged to the company's resident soprano
star, Jurate vedaite-Waller, wife of Lyric Opera general director John
Waller, in the role of the wistful Contessa. The role is graced with two
gorgeous moments, the Act 2 cavatina "Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro" and the
Act 3 "Dove sono," both full of longing and sorrow. In both, vedaite-Waller
employed a gorgeous messa di voce to subtly taper long, fluid lines and
transfix the audience. Her heart-wrenching "Dove sono" was one of those
moments of opera magic, when a palpable electricity filled the room.
 
As the love-struck page boy Cherubino, mezzo-soprano Hayden DeWitt was a
crowd-pleaser. A specialist in trouser roles, she was antic in her
characterization and strong-voiced in the ensembles. As Marcellina, the
conniving would-be wife of Figaro, Margaret Tyler was a scene-stealer with
her perfect sense of comic timing, as pinpoint subtle as DeWitt was
over-the-top. And as the servant Barbarina, soprano Jonelyn Langenstein was
just plain lovely to the ear and the eye.
 
An opera so full of memorable moments almost defies recounting. From
Figaro's military send-off for Cherubino, to the famous Act 2 ensembles in
the Contessa's quarters, to the brilliant letter scene soprano duet, to the
Act 4 solo showpieces for each principal, this "Figaro" fulfilled the high
standards of one of the greatest of all theater works.
 
Seldom has the final sublime ensemble "Ah! tutti contenti" ("Let us all be
happy") rung so true.