Bel Cantanti: Le Nozze di Figaro

Bel Cantanti’s triumphant performance of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro at the Embassy of Austria offers useful hints to many musical organizations in the Washington area. First, BelCantanti reinforces the fact that the Washington/Baltimore area is overflowing with trained operatic voices, many of whom are able to present concert-level performances combined with considerable acting skill. Second, Bel Cantanti shows how skillfully a major opera can be reduced to its basic musical score and performed without the full elaboration of sets and costumes many now consider essential for any opera performance. Third, Bel Cantanti demonstrates that prices for opera tickets can still be kept at an affordable level, making the cost of a ticket to a live performance fully competitive with the cost of a recorded CD version of the same opera.

Bel Cantanti director Katerina Souvorova created the company in 2003, and herself accompanied the entire Figaro performance as pianist, along with a string quartet. The reduced musical background permitted the voices of the singers in Figaro to shine in the relatively small concert space available at the Embassy of Austria. Bel Cantanti is able to shift the location of its performances among several spaces during the run of each opera, as Figaro will also be performed at the Embassy of Germany and the Randolph Road Theater later in December.The richness of talent assembled by Bel Cantanti is shown by the fact that each of the four major roles in Figaro (Figaro, his wife-top-be Susanna, Count Almaviva and the Countess Almaviva) is performed on alternating nights by different singers. Meghan McCall made a superlative Susanna on the opening night, and Bryan Jackson brought to the role of Figaro both a strong voice and a deft comic sense of acting. Angela Marchese made an impressively lyrical Countess, and Matthew Osifchin brought a passionate baritone voice to the role of the Count, though Osifchin was not always randy enough for the role’s intricate implications. The costumes developed increasing richness as the opera proceeded, but throughout the Count’s costumes were perhaps not distinctive enough to set him off as a rich aristocrat in essential control of the destinies of the other characters. The "group" arias in Acts III and IV were lovely in their blending of distinctive voices, though Meghan McCall was consistently the most outstanding voice in all combinations. Jessica Renfro made a continually amusing Cherubino, playing a role in which traditionally a female singer pretends to be a man later pretending to be a woman. Alexandra Christoforakis as Marcellina, eventually revealed to be Figaro’s mother, stole every scene in which she appeared as she created a low-life virago. Alexader Kugler turned the relatively minor role of Basilio into an important character and should have a career worth watching in the future.