Setting aside the glorious extravagant music for a while, this production for me is a major visual treat. The entire stage is totally watchable: there's action even on the sidelines. Nobody just stands there waiting to sing.
Opera stars these days can act as well as sing and even look the part. Even the trouser role of Cherubino, traditionally played by a female singer dressed intentionally unconvincingly as a man, is played almost straight here. The result is a charming sendup of a libidinous rock-and-rolling teenage boy.
This evening's Figaro too has great dance moves; he's graceful and lithe. That's not to say that his tenor is not of the most superb kind; I'm just more inclined towards the theatrics rather than the operatics of opera. Which is also why I can't drop names as none of the cast names here mean much to me.
This Nozze di Figaro has more in common with Broadway than 18th century opera. Act III's big production number looks like a scene from Grease. (And I mean that in the best possible way.)
Not since the Met's 2013 Rigoletto, dressed in a white tuxedo, grabbed a mic onstage in a casino to sing the aria "Questa o quella" has opera looked so accessible to lay folk like me.
The set design is sheer delight. Scene stages are cleverly stacked in color-blocked boxes like a giant Mondrian. Sets are straight out of a 1950s Hollywood backlot, sunshiny and bright with interiors all citrusy in limes and oranges, and bursts of pumpkin colors in mid-century touches like oversized lampshades, sofa beds, and a retro dial-up telephone with miles of cording.
And the costumes! Alright, I'll come right out about my fixation on over-the-top operatic productions. I like period sets, period costumes. So I was a bit letdown when I saw the posters showing no bouncy wedding-cake ball gowns, towering powdered wigs, or pink-cheeked whiteout faces with heart-shaped beauty marks.
Forget about it! The women's costumes here are such delicious confections: there are frothy Sandra Dee frocks in sherbet colors, razor-sharp pencil-cuts in a deadly serious shade of brilliant blue, and drop-dead Dioresque couture in svelte satin and silks.
An army of eye-candylicious runway-types move stage furniture around, looking like they've stepped out of an Anna Wintour issue mockup.
And the men? Not much to work on here, but they do look stunning in jodhpurs and slicked back hair. Mostly though, they wear various iterations of the Mondrian theme.
But what about the music? You may well ask but you really have to ask someone else. For me, Mozart is Mozart. I am sorely lacking in the chops to pick out the various ways British conductor William Lacey shines in this production.
Ensemble singing in opera buffa may be skillful and exciting but I much prefer bel canto where it's easier for me to understand the beauty of the melody and the voice.
Speaking of understanding, I wish the surtitles were in a language I can understand. Translating Italian to Russian doesn't help me at all.
Music, however, needs no translation. And Mozart is universal.
I come away from The Bolshoi New Stage my head swimming in bright and beautiful scenes, my heart brimming with joyful notes.
