Le Nozze di Figaro, Komische Oper, Berlin, review: purists be damned – this is sensational

The Edinburgh International Festival is taking opera seriously this summer, and among its imports will be this riveting, moving reinvention of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro by the Komische Oper from Berlin.

There is quite a backstory to the show: it is staged by the leading Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov, who was controversially convicted of fraud in Russia in 2020 when director of the Gogol Centre and placed under house arrest, which forced him to direct productions by video link using an assistant. His suspended sentence was eventually lifted in 2022, and he was able to able to leave the country. The Komische Oper then re-staged his Così fan tutte, commissioned this new Figaro, and promises the third of the Mozart/Da Ponte cycle, Don Giovanni, next year.

Serebrennikov is an unrelentingly questioning interpreter, never content to leave the works of the past where they are. This adapted Figaro will doubtless infuriate the purists. It is not fully realised and not all the singing is great, but it delivers a sensational impact. The horizontally split stage reveals the life of the aristocracy in the bleak apartment above, dominated by contemporary art which for him is a metaphor of power, and the crowded servants’ quarters below with its washing machines, ironing boards and lockers.

This is no cosy Downton-like upstairs/downstairs, but a life-and-death struggle for dominance. Susanna (Penny Sofroniadou) is the skilful centre of the resistance, Figaro (Tommaso Barea) her compliant but not over-intelligent aide, the Count (Hubert Zaplor) the entitled landlord whose world crumbles, while the blonde Countess (Nadja Mchanaf) is a pawn in the process.

Then to this arguably too-easy updated translation of the story, which we have seen before in modern Figaros, Serebrennikov adds a dream-like patina of invention which leaves one breathless. The page boy Cherubino, whom he sees as the sexual centre of the opera, is a deaf-mute (Gegory Kudrenko), his songs sung wonderfully by a new character Cherubina (Susan Zarrabi) to create another couple. Nothing in the opera is as moving as their joint aria Voi che sapete; he is as physically agile in expressing the text as she is in singing the music.

Marcellina is the house manager and art curator, giving us a rare chance to hear her Act 4 aria, albeit in Act 3. Bartolo’s La vendetta is less well moved from Act 1 to Act 3; there is no chorus, necessitating some musical rearrangement.

The Count’s increasingly fevered trance suggests a dreamlike threesome with both the Countess and Susanna, with music added from Cosi. At his final moment of collapse in Act 4, as shards of mirrors play with reality in the garden scene, there is a piercingly bold interruption to the finale as Mozart’s Dissonance Quartet takes us into his tortured mind.

This could be deeply irritating, but Serebrennikov creates unforgettably pungent pictures with closely observed detail and penetrating humanity, as a smoking Susanna mimics the marital arguments, or the aged retainer faithfully cleans the basement. In the open pit of the Schiller Theatre, James Gaffigan steers the Komische Oper orchestra around the sublime music with unobtrusive skill. Like it or hate it, this show is a creative ferment which must be seen.

 Komische Oper Berlin to May 26 and at the Edinburgh International Festival August 16-18