{TABLE} Le nozze di Figaro ....... Mozart {/TABLE} FOR its new Nozze di Figaro, Opera Ireland clearly hoped to bring together successful elements from some of its more recent Mozart productions. Director Michael McCaffery did his best work for the company in last year's Magic Flute. The Countess (Mariette Kemmer) and conductor (Simon Joly) both featured in the stylish Cosi fan tutte of 1993. The results of the re combination, however, were rather mixed.
Simon Joly, who made such a favourable impression in Cosi, rarely seemed comfortably in command of this Figaro. There were problems of ensemble, of transition, of balance, and the RTECO's first oboe was allowed to contribute sourly and coarsely to some of the major arias.
Michael McCaffery never seemed to find the paciness suggested by Paul Edwards's luridly coloured costumes and gaggy designs (which included a monster eight mattress stack in the first act and ceiling images on the back wall for the first three acts), let alone the pressure that came in bursts from the pit. It may well have been that the steep rake of the floor inhibited liveliness of movement; if so, this feature of the design must be reckoned a major miscalculation.
Mariette Kemmer was a strong and vocally sound Countess, if not one who yielded much insight in her big arias. And at the other end of the house, in class terms, the finest performance also came from the distaff side, in Mary Hegarty's lively, resourceful and appealing Susanna.
Saturday's first night may not have given a fully accurate impression of what will be heard later, since indisposition announcements (hard to decipher) were made on behalf of Desmond Byrne's Figaro (which I managed to make out) and Karl Daymond's Count (which I was told about), neither of whom communicated with the requisite presence of voice or character.
In the smaller roles, Jonathan Veira made a genially villainous Bartolo, Ugo Benelli a painstakingly detailed Basilio and Kristina Hammars from a tall and engaging Cherubino who was at her best when playing a boy playing at being a girl. Gerard O'Connor showed strong comic presence as the slow gardener, Antonio, but something jarred in Deirdre Masterson's Barbarina (she sounded too old) and Pauline Tinsley's hag-in-orange Marcellina went disturbingly off the rails in her Act IV aria.
