Kirill Serebrennikov drags Mozart into the 21st century

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Nothing gets in the way of Kirill Serebrennikov’s determination to drag The Marriage of Figaro into the violent and nasty 21st century. For this Komische Oper Berlin staging, dropped on to the Edinburgh International Festival like a small bomb, the dissident Russian director changes Da Ponte’s libretto, Mozart’s music and even the opera’s usual characters to suit his vision of what’s needed to give a “convention-bound” 18th-century drama a contemporary buzz.
So Act III opens with the Count, Countess and Susanna having a ménage à trois while singing a trio from Così fan tutte in front of a neon sign proclaiming “Capitalism kills love”. There’s a mass stabbing in the same act, inflicted by Cherubino — or rather, by a mute, dancing Cherubino (played, controversially, by a non-mute Russian actor), because there’s also a “Cherubina” who sings Cherubino’s arias. And as if one hyperactive Russian mime isn’t enough, the Count has a bodyguard who does attention-grabbing contortions while some poor singer is trying to deliver an aria.
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We also get a tinkle of Tosca when Cherubino leaps, starkers, out of the window. That at least gets a laugh in a production relentlessly determined to steamroller Da Ponte’s humour (Serebrennikov thinks Figaro is “not particularly comedic”). And the opera’s most heart-rending moment — the Countess forgiving the Count — is bizarrely put on hold for a few minutes so the orchestra can play the start of Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet, while the Count stares in horror at his collapsing world.
Some of this is ingeniously conceived and staged with flair, even if you constantly feel you are watching some dark, depressing movie about the Russian mafia, replete with torture scenes. It was certainly put across with conviction by a characterful cast, of whom the young Greek soprano Penny Sofroniadou was the standout star as a Susanna seething with resentment for her employers.
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But the production is desperately overloaded. There are usually five things happening at once on a split-level set that evokes the world of the super-rich upstairs and a grim cellar for their servants below. The last act, played amid glinting, Jeff Koons-like sculptures, is especially baffling. Serebrennikov doesn’t even try to block the actors in a way that makes sense of the plot.
That split-level set also has unfortunate musical consequences: too often the singers came unhinged from the orchestra, conducted by James Gaffigan. A shame; the playing was otherwise excellent.★★★✩☆
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