UA Opera Theater tackles Mozart's comic gem

UA Opera Theater opens its 2022-23 season this weekend with a production Director Cynthia Stokes says is the most perfect opera ever written.

Mozart’s “Le nozze di Figaro” (The Marriage of Figaro) is a tall order for any company and particularly for students. In addition to having the vocal chops, singers also must be good comic actors.

Stokes, starting her sixth year at the University of Arizona Fred Fox School of Music, says she’s confident in the talent of her students to pull it off.

“It’s a huge production and a huge undertaking, but we had the capacity ... in a bumper crop of singers,” she said. “This is a really, really talented crop of singers coming up from the program.”

UA Opera Theater will perform Mozart’s opera buffa (comic opera) four times this weekend, starting with opening night on Thursday, Nov. 17, at Crowder Hall.

Mozart teamed up with his go-to Italian librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1786 to write the opera, based on French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais’s 1784 play of the same name and follows the characters from Rossini’s “Le Barbier de Séville” (The Barber of Seville). Instead of working as a barber turned valet, Figaro is now leading the servant staff in the court of Count Almaviva and Countess Rosina in Spain.

“Figaro” is a tale of social divisions, power struggles, mistaken identity, betrayal and ultimately forgiveness, as Figaro sets out to marry fellow servant Susanna, the Countess’s maid. But on the way to the altar, the couple faces roadblocks from the vindictive Dr. Bartolo, still smarting over losing Rosina to the Count, who claims that Figaro wrote a letter pledging to marry the much older Marcellina, Bartolo’s old housekeeper. Then there’s the womanizing Count, who wants to exercise his royal right to bed the bride on the wedding night, which doesn’t sit well with the Countess. The story’s hilarious plot twists and turns find Susanna, the Countess and Figaro joining forces to expose the Count’s infidelities and get the happy couple to the altar.

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“I think it is just the most satisfying, perfect opera,” said Stokes, who also called it “the opera that justifies our existence as a species,” from its storyline of the fight over good and evil between the haves and the have-nots to the music that has become ubiquitous courtesy of TV commercials. The thrilling overture with its fast-paced melodies is used to sell everything from Pringles to handmade Etsy crafts to the NFL.

“Le nozze di Figaro” has consistently ranked in the top 10 most performed operas worldwide and is considered to be one of the greatest operas ever written, according to the BBC’s Classical Music magazine.

“We are punching so high above our weight class with this,” Stokes said about staging “Figaro.” “But you know what: Why not? Why not give these talented singers the opportunity to sink their teeth in the best opera ever.”

“I consider ‘Figaro’ to be one of the gems of all Mozart’s works, not just his operas,” UA Orchestral Activities Director Thomas Cockrell, who will conduct Arizona Symphony Orchestra in the production, said in a written statement.

The production is in Italian with English surtitles. It’s at 7 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 17, through Saturday, Nov. 19; and at 3 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 20, at Crowder Hall, 1017 N. Olive Road.

Tickets are $20; $10 for students; $15 for seniors, military and UA employees through tucne.ws/1lu7.