Kasper Bech Holten’s new staging of Mozart’s masterpiece Le nozze di Figaro features as a veritable erotic pressure cooker where 10 characters are confined to the same room for 24 hours to experience the emotional and hormonal helter-skelter of the changing seasons of the year; from the hot erotic drive of summer to the limp melancholy of autumn, from the chill of winter to the hope of spring.
“It’s as if the people are small guinea pigs running around in a box doing their best but without any real aim. We can look down on them and laugh at their pitiful attempts. It is – as we have seen on TV with ‘Big Brother’ where a group of people are confined – a kind of social and erotic experiment.”
Kasper Bech Holten, Artistic Director
Le nozze di Figaro is a complex comedy with a wide embracing and multifarious view of human nature. The opera comes across as a bitter-sweet musical winter’s tale tinged with melancholy and irony that portrays both the dark and bright sides of life.
Steffen Aarfing has created the set design, which with its Rococo styling dresses culture in the sinuous vernacular of nature, which is represented as a potent and changeable force to be reckoned with. Costume design is by Marie i Dali.
Le nozze di Figaro will be performed in the full original version that premiered in Vienna in 1786. Commanding the podium is Graeme Jenkins, who conducted the current production at Theater an der Wien in the summer of 2007. Now he will conduct the Royal Danish Orchestra and the Royal Danish Opera Chorus. Graeme Jenkins is very conscious of the praxes and traditions of classical music. He has conducted more than 150 opera productions worldwide, and for the Royal Danish Theatre he has conducted Mozart’s Clemenza di Tito.
Performing as the aristocrats with marital woes are Ylva Kihlberg (la contessa) and Palle Knudsen (Il conte). Figaro, who has no intention of sharing his betrothed with his master, will be performed by Johannes Mannov. Susanna, Figaro’s bride-to-be, will be performed by Gisela Stille. The young Cherubino, who has a hard time reigning in his runaway desires for the opposite sex, will be performed by Elisabeth Jansson. Also appearing are Lise-Lotte Nielsen (Marcellina), Guido Paevatalu (Bartolo), Thomas Peter Koppel (Basilio), Ole Sorensen (Antonio) and Ingrid Vetlesen (Barbarina).
Performance will take place through 14 June, 2008. -- www.kglteater.dk
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