 "Photo: James Daly/Manitou Messenger")
Opera season is back on the Hill, and it is back intrigue-style. The music department’s lyric theater season kicks off with the “Marriage of Figaro,” the famous Mozart opera. The singing is amazing, the plot is humorous and best of all, it has been translated from Italian into English, making listening for the masses more enjoyable. The opera will be performed Oct. 30 and 31 in Urness Recital Hall.
A brief synopsis of the plot: the opera is set in 1780s Spain, near Seville. The Count’s valet, Figaro (Nick Miguel ’10), is set to marry Susanna (Francesca Cavilia ’10), a beautiful maid in the service of the Countess Rosina (Ana Ashby ’10). Countess Rosina tries throughout the opera to prevent her husband, the lecherous Count Almaviva (Derek Trayling) from having his way with Susanna. The Countess, very much aware of what the Count’s intentions, wishes to stop and embarrass him.
To further complicate matters, one of the Count’s male pages (Elizabeth Kerstein ’11 in a “trouser role”) has an interest in the countess. The Count offers a military commission to the young page to get rid of him, but the page dresses as a woman and sneaks back into the castle. Figaro, amidst all of his problems with the count, also finds himself the object of an older woman’s desire and has to worm his way out of a promise he made earlier.
With this complicated web of stories and considerable sexual tension, cases of mistaken identity and misunderstandings, and conspiracy and intrigue, you have the “Marriage of Figaro.” The music director James McKeel and the stage director Janis Hardy have worked hard with the cast to stage this very entertaining work. The rest of the cast inludes Lucy Hires ’11 as Marcellina, Matt Roe ’10 as Bartolo, Danny Dahlquist as Basilio, Nathan Dougherty ’12 as Don Corzio, Katie Mersch ’10 as Barbarina and Stanford Scriven ’11 as Antonio.
McKeel especially noted that a lot of work has gone into character development, as he aims to push the character stereotypes as far as possible but to still make them very identifiable to audiences today. This emphasis, according to McKeel, is what makes this opera accessible and entertaining to the wider public and should offer student audiences a good time.
The cast is a mixture of students from the Music 267 Advanced Acting for the Lyric Stage class and veterans of past campus operas. According to McKeel, the student actors have gained valuable experience here at St. Olaf that translates directly into “operas in the real world.”
Since there are four operas on the Hill a year, the students leave the program very knowledgeable about lyric theatre. Some recent alumni who participated in the operas here, said McKeel, are now with professional opera companies showing how impressive an experience these operas offer students.
Why should a student who knows nothing about opera go and watch? After all, opera can be daunting and very long to sit through unless one is a serious aficionado. Aside from the fact that the cast and crew have worked very hard over the past two months to bring this opera to campus, there are other good reasons to spend some time and watch.
McKeel mentioned that “this opera has been cut for students,” recognizing that many students are wary of investing a large chunk of their time otherwise. This means that the length of the opera is pared down to only two and a half hours and is also performed in English.
The cast also encourages people to try it, pointing to examples in the past where skeptical friends of cast members walked away from an opera realizing that it was actually a lot of fun.
Specifically for “Marriage of Figaro,” Ashby said, “It’s just a hilarious show. I think opera can be a bit intimidating, but when it’s free, it’s in English and it’s Mozart, it’s especially worth the risk of pretension.”
Cavilia added, “It has foolish characters, clever characters, mistaken identities, love, aggression and plenty of sexual tension. What more could a St. Olaf student want?”
As an added bonus, the cast will be wearing costumes to match the period of the opera.
After nearly two months of solid rehearsals, the cast is ready for you to come and see them perform. The night promises to be full of eighteenth century humor and insults, violence and sexual tension and, quite possibly, happy endings.
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