The Marriage of Figaro

The Sacramento Opera presented as its second opera - The Marriage of Figaro. It was excellent, a wonderful ensemble of voices. Figaro is part of three opera set (the others being Rosenkavelier - which was one of my mother's favorite operas and the Barber of Seville) that deal with the character Figaro. This one has a number of twists and double entendres, in the style of traditional opera buffa. It concerns the impending marriage of Figaro to Susanna and the interventions of the Count and his wife and a bunch of other zany characters - but like with most of Mozart - the music comes first. The cast has a couple of very strong voices including the Countess (Emily Pulley) and Figaro(Bojan Knezevich) but as one of my seat mates commented yesterday, the whole cast had a great mix of voice and dramatic talent which made the performance even more enjoyable.

I recently saw Amadeus, the Milos Foreman movie, and one of the key lines in the movie is Mozart trying to explain the opera. Mozart builds duets into trios, into quartets and then beyond. The music is elegant and fun at the same time.

There is one more performance of this run for Sacramento, on Tuesday night, and it would be well worth it to get tickets. The Sacramento Opera is great resource for the city and the region.