“In Italian with German surtitles” is what is usually said when Mozart’s opera “Le nozze di Figaro” is on the programme. And so the audience can learn to count after the overture: “Cinque… dieci… venti… trenta… trentasei… quarantatre…” Figaro misses the place for the wedding bed, while his future Susanna tries on the bridal wreath in front of the mirror: “Guarda un po’, guarda adesso il mio cappello!” But the guy is busy and not looking. “Five … ten … twenty …” The Munich Chamber Opera decided on a German text version for its production of “Nozze”, which premieres on August 25 in the Hubertussaal of Nymphenburg Palace.
That’s how they’ve been since they were founded in 2004, and that’s how it used to be in many hotels. The audience should understand what is going on on stage, and this also helps the young ensemble of singers to follow the trials and tribulations on stage down to the last detail, explains director Maximilian Berling in the program booklet, explaining the decision in favor of the somewhat less flexible German consonants. Purists will also quarrel with intervention number two in Mozart’s original, which they consciously accept in the chamber opera. Arranger Alexander Krampe felt the same way himself: to remove “at least a third” from the perfect music with all the great aria hits requires a courageous surgical hand.
“The Marriage of Figaro” now has a concentrated playing time of two hours instead of the usual three. In this production of the opera, which premiered in 1786, on the eve of the French Revolution, the chamber opera team is concerned with closeness. It is so much more than an erotic confusion game, than a door comedy. Beaumarchais’ piece, which fell into the hands of an enthusiastic Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte as perfect opera material, shows, veiled in frivolous lightness, the impotence of the Third Estate in the face of the arbitrariness of the nobility, the sexual abuse of power. Last but not least, #Metoo brings Mozart’s opera buffa into the present.
In the Nymphenburg Palace, the entire hall becomes part of the stage. “It is therefore not a space separated from the audience, but also extends into our reality,” says director Berling. “Our excellent young ensemble, whose age largely corresponds to that of the respective roles, enables direct access to the characters and the play.”
“Figaro’s Wedding”, Munich Chamber Opera, premiere Thursday, August 25, 7.30 p.m., introduction 6.30 p.m., Hubertussaal Schloss Nymphenburg, information on the performances until September 18 and ticket reservations at www.kammeroper-muenchen.com