(Photo credit: Keith Saunders)

This winter season at Sydney Opera House has seen Opera Australia once again revive Sir David McVicar’s 2015 production of Mozart’s “Marriage of Figaro,” restaged by Andy Morton previously, as recently as 2022.

OperaWire has pertinently noted the repeat of “tried and true” in Opera Australia’s 2025 season in a recent review of “Rusalka” (itself not a repeat). However, there was still, in this repeat offering of “Figaro,” the opportunity to benefit from a comparison of this and the previous staging, reasonably fresh in Sydneysiders’ minds, and verify previous impressions.

McVicar’s production is an intelligent interpretation, nicely showing the incipient undermining of the feudal society against which the farcical intrigues take place and doing so with a light touch that is signaled, for example, by the pervasive comedy of servants eavesdropping behind the aristocratic household’s closed doors (the upper class’s fruitless assertions of “off-limits”).

Jenny Tiramani’s sets, lit beautifully by David Finn, provided a realistic anchor to McVicar’s 17th century setting. As noted in 2022, they matched the verisimilitude of 17th century Flemish painters, acknowledging, in a sense, the reality of the social criticism which Mozart and librettist Da Ponte (and Beaumarchais, whose play the opera is based on) implied in their comedy of the catching-out of the sexually ravenous master, Count Almaviva (bass-baritone Gordon Bintner).

But most people don’t go to the opera to hum the sets (even if that, as some have observed, seems to be the intention of producers of modern musicals).

Conductor Matteo Dal Maso provided supportive stewardship of Mozart’s novelistically-detailed score. In the orchestra’s opening gestures and somewhat muted tuttis, the overture had presaged a subdued reading, somewhat at odds with Dal Maso’s occasionally-vigorous gestures. During “Se vuol ballare,” where Figaro (bass-baritone Michael Sumuel) first registers that his patron Count Almaviva’s generous offer to him and fiancée Susanna (Siobhan Stagg) of the bedroom next to his masks less than generous intentions, phrase-ends seemed to taper off to near-silence. Excessive musical neatening or expressing ironic whimsy? But it was not long before the orchestra supplied overall a crisper and informative underlying edge to the proceedings. Dal Maso was an attentive accompanist, for example watching Sumuel’s manipulation of tempi closely in that same number. Strings conveyed the currents and cross-currents of intent and emotion in recitatives. Throughout the evening continuo player, Siro Battaglin on fortepiano, underlined (often humorously and ironically) the emotional quality of characters’ responses as well as punctuating recitatives’ harmonic progress.

The cast’s characterizations were a delight to watch. Minor characters such as Richard Anderson as Bartolo, Dominica Matthews as Marcellina (who has her own designs on Figaro before discovering he’s her son!), Virgilio Marino as Basilio and Kanen Breen as Don Curzio, the notary, were nicely delineated.

As Figaro, Sumuel delivered his highlights with great aplomb. “Non più andrai” where Figaro mocks the young lovelorn Cherubino packed off to the army by the count (who is hypocritically resentful of Cherubino’s interest in the household’ s women), was superbly visualized. There may have been occasional bluster, say in forceful (peeved?) embellishment of the cadence material when trying to rattle Cherubino, but Sumuel had established such sympathy for Figaro by the end of Act one that we could conclude he was “driven to it.”

Gordon Bintner made for an imposing Count. There was such detail in his characterization, even down to the rueful sotto voce, “That’s devilishly clever. But I must go along with it” (as the surtitles put it), when Figaro attempts to hold him to his promises by arranging for the household population to carry adulatory signs. “Grazie al nostro nobilissimo Signor” and “Gloria al nostro liberal Signor” said two, rubbing in that the Count is supposed to have abolished his “baronial right,” as the program booklet put it, to the estate’s women. Were these signs laying on the message a bit thickly, reminiscent of a 21^st century demonstration? But in general, the production was documentarily believable. In 2022, I registered problems with the Count slapping the face of the Countess during the Act two chamber-intrigues, but, for some reason, it was not as jarring on this occasion. Perhaps this was because the Slap was not so unexpected this time. But there seemed also a harder edge to Bintner’s Count, a consistent sense of the character’s frustrations and deluded rage.

As Susanna, Siobhan Stagg established a warm rapport with Figaro from their very first number, the duet, “Cinque… dieci… venti…,” where Figaro is measuring up the bedroom which she informs Figaro the Count is not so altruistically gifting them. There could be a debate over who is the most sympathetic character–the Countess cheated on by her husband or Susanna, the good-hearted object of the count’s unwanted attention? As Susanna drew a “make-shift” curtain across the set for her Act four appeal for Figaro’s love, “Giunse alfin il momento – Deh vieni non tardar,” it was as if McVicar had made his editorial decision. The audience responded warmly to Stagg’s beautifully-contemplative soliloquy. It was lovingly-conducted.

Mezzo Emily Edmonds was a believably lovelorn adolescent as the 17 year-old page-boy, Cherubino. You could sense the palpitations in Edmond’s Act one aria, “Non so più cosa son, cosa faccio.” The Countess’s susceptibility to “his” charms (resisted) in Act two was nicely played.

Kiandra Howarth as the Countess on this date (the role is taken by Jane Ede for the second part of the season) retained her dignity even at her most anguished. A covered tone conveyed a real sense of mourning over her lover-husband’s neglect when she sang of her sighs in “Porgi amor.”

Perhaps the moment that could have been made more of was at the very end when the Count begs forgiveness when it is he, and not the Countess, who is caught in the act of pursuing others. “Contessa, perdono” he sings and she replies that she will, “Più docile io sono, e dico di sì.” It may be a big ask, but it is almost as if all moments should not be able to help but lead to this. Yet, I almost missed it. It must be very hard to achieve this.

Nevertheless, this was a truly entertaining production, and entertaining because revealing of character and motivation. Arguably, “The Marriage of Figaro” attains a perfect un-didactic balance of entertainment and social revelation, and seeing this production again, confirmed that McVicar meets Mozart’s blend.