There, I believe, is our pole-to-pole range of ways to master the Duke’s music,^(I) with a resulting median of comparable effectiveness thrown in, resulting in three vivid sound pictures, all plausible, of the Duke of Mantua, as suggested in his first solo. If I were to ask Piotr Beczala, “Is that all that can be done?”, would he answer “It’s hopeless, the maestro will not yield?” And if I directed the same question to Daniele Rustioni, would he say “It’s pointless, he can’t do anything more?” Would either or both be correct, or is it simply our assumptions, our mechanical habits of preparation and performance, that have taken away so much interpretive richness, so much personal color and  sense of discovery, from our operatic experience? And of course, it is by no means just this tenor and conductor, but most; not just this piece, but the entire role, the entire opera; and not just this opera, but, again, most. We need to go back to Square One, and begin again.

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The Figaro is a revival of the Met’s 2014 production directed by Richard Eyre and designed by Rob Howell. I have till this season stayed away from it, and now I know why. What to say of it? I cannot bear to examine it closely, but will try to give you a brief outline and a few specifics. The outline: On the most pointlessly ugly set I can recall ever seeing (and may not a postmonitory nightmare drag another from the netherworld), a gathering of seriously undervoiced performers worked hard to sustain a hellish atmosphere of mummerish jackanapery, and succeeded to the point at which any effort to focus in on a scenetic or musical moment or event, or to string together a series of such into a coherent progression, was bludgeoned into  stunned submission. No aspect, sensory or structural, aesthetic or dramatic, of Mozart and Da Ponte’s miraculous creation survived the relentless succession of misapplied invention and maladroit shtick. How much of this emanated from Eyre’s original schema, how much from the guidance of the revival’s stage director (Paula Williams), and how much from the performers themselves, is unknowable. So we must condemn all until or unless exculpatory evidence comes to light.

This is another update:—“a manor house near Seville, the 1930s,” says the program’s synopsis. So among many unresolvable contradictions, the army Cherubino is being sent off to must be Francisco Franco’s Fascist force, then engaged in the Spanish Civil War (the Almavivas surely were not for the Republic), perhaps with air support from a squadron recently formed by our  Berliner “Duke of Mantua.” No more dallying with Countesses for page or Duke. It’s as witless a period displacement as Sher’s for Rigoletto, or James Robinson’s WW1 Bohème for the NYCO, or Jonathan Miller’s pre-WW1 Rosenkavalier for the same bygone institution. This is also another turntable extravaganza. Figaro‘s revolves less during mid-scene than Rigoletto’s, serving mostly to reveal fresh harsh angles on its metallic Aguas Frescas, or to enable some new onstage/offstage distraction for the blearied eye (e. g., Basilio seen listening in a hallway before his first entrance—there goes that nice little reveal).