The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro)

By Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponti

First performed at the Burgtheater, Vienna, May 1, 1786 The Marriage of Figaro is one of the monumental achievements of the opera stage. Combining complex and original characterizations with exquisite music, five or six of the songs in this single work have become age-spanning classics of the repertoire.

Mozart clearly needs no help from me in searching for a visual metaphor, changing the time or the place of the action seemed unnecessary, as did bending it into another narrative genre. I was struck, however, by the layers of artifice in the story as the characters seem to define and redefine themselves at will, giving different performances of themselves depending on what the situation requires. And so the giant frame was born, as a tool for the production to explore the ways in which the characters change back and forth from being themselves to playing themselves.

Matthew Bissett, Stage Director