Time tends to stand still at the Central City Opera, where not so much has changed since the company got into business eight decades ago. The old Renaissance-revival opera house, fully restored, though still no heat, looks like it did the day it opened, perhaps even better.
And opera, of course, is still opera. Watching “The Marriage of Figaro” there this week, it could just as easily have been 1952 or 1972 or 1979, the previous years when Central City staged the warhorse. Same notes, same silly situations set to Mozart’s beautiful music.
It’s a comfort to go there, though the history piles on the challenges for the company. They owe it all around, to tradition, to ticket buyers, to Mozart, to put on a good show.
They did. The singing was crisp, top to bottom. The playing precise. The sets, the costumes all entertaining. Comfort and joy, and in July.
“Figaro” is never easy to stage. It has numerous gimmicks as the namesake butler tries to save the virtue of his betrothed Susanna, a target of the lecherous Count Almaviva. There’s intrigue with the count’s wife and the lusty pageboy Cherubino and the action plays through scenes where men dress as women and women dress as other women. Confusing.
Success depends on the pacing. Mozart set nearly all of the work in major keys; it has to be bright.
Stage director Alessandro Talevi got it, though he moved up the action a century and a half to 1920s Spain, when the country’s revolution was warming up. It was a fine way to highlight the plot’s battle of the classes, and an even finer excuse for scenic designer Madeleine Boyd to deck out the sets in botanical wallpapers and for costume designer Susan Kulkarni to decorate the sopranos in flapper dresses. It was a vigorous, sensible shake-up of the original.
As for the vocalizing, it was a long list of good things that warrants specific call-outs to all the majors: Anna Christy, Michael Sumuel, Edward Parks, Sinéad Mulhern, Tamra Gura.
At 3 hours and 15 minutes, it’s a marathon for everyone, same as it was in 1786 when it premiered in Vienna, same as it was 1952 right in Central City. There’s a tradition to that, and it is well-honored in 2014.
“The Marriage of Figaro” continues through July 26. 303-292-6700 or centralcityopera.org.
Ray Mark Rinaldi: 303-954-1540, rrinaldi@ denverpost.com or twitter.com/rayrinaldi
