March 11 and 18, 7:30pm - 10:30 pm March 12 and 19, 2pm - 5pm
The Marriage of Figaro
By Mozart Performed at the Bankhead Theater, 2400 First Street, Downtown Livermore
The Marriage of Figaro is a timeless comedy with its bubbling overture and brilliant arias composed by Mozart at the height of his genius - the result is a witty yet profound tale of love, betrayal, and forgiveness. It tells how the servants, Figaro and Susanna, cleverly outwit their master, Count Almaviva, from seducing Susanna. Through their manipulations, the Count's love for his Countess is restored. Adding to the fun is an old man seeking revenge, a scheming maid, a drunken gardener, and an amorous teenager. Much happens on a single, crazy day!
Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro is not so much a comedy as it is a farce: farce seems silly and ridiculous, but reveals something about human nature through satire and absurdity that mere comedy cannot.
Surely DaPonte appreciated that when he was setting Pierre Augustin Beaumarchais' popular play, which skewers class distinctions and exposes the moral hypocrisy of the aristocracy. I've chosen to set Figaro in the late 1940s in Hollywood on the soundstage of a film set, where a Cecile B. DeMille type is filming The Marriage of Figaro. I wanted to give our Figaro a modern, if not contemporary, setting that would allow people to see more of themselves and those they know in the story.
It's so easy to assume that the droit du seigneur is fictional or a thing of the past: that people in power and privilege don't use that power in selfish and intimidating ways. Viewed through a 21st-century lens, the Count is a serial sexual predator but set in the 1940s I hope that it will be less political and more personal.
A film stage setting will allow us to reveal some of the scenes in a traditional way with period costumes (those scenes being filmed) and in a more immediate way in the behind-the-scenes elements of the story (the actor playing the Count imposing himself on the actress playing Susanna.
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