The Greatest Opera Ever? Spokane Opera Presents Mozart’S Famous ‘Figaro’

Many opera fans think “The Marriage of Figaro” is Mozart’s greatest opera. For others, “Figaro” is simply the greatest opera by any composer.

Spokane Opera opens the fall musical season with six performances of “The Marriage of Figaro” beginning Friday night at The Met. The production will feature Derrick Parker as the valet Figaro; Heather Steckler as his bride-to-be Susanna; Steven Mortier as their master, the Count Almaviva; Jessica Jones as Rosina, the Countess Almavuva; and Heather Peterson as the Count’s love-sick page, Cherubino.

For this production, Mortier received a promotion. After several years of singing the part of the servant Figaro, Mortier will sing the aristocrat, Count Almaviva. Bass-baritone Derrick Parker will be singing his first Figaro.

Most baritones are happy with either role. Figaro and the Count are big parts rich with challenges. Both Mortier and Parker wax enthusiastic.

“The Count is a great part — he has all the emotions and all the vocal colors that go along with them,” Mortier says. “I’ve done a ton of Figaros, and I’ve got all of Figaro’s music running through my head. When we’re all out there on stage, I’ve got to remember on certain entrances that, this time, I’m NOT Figaro.”

Mortier recently moved to Spokane from New York with his wife (also an opera singer) and their three children. He made an acclaimed local debut at Connoisseur Concerts’ all-Mozart concert in Manito Park in July.

Parker, in his second year at Houston Opera Studio, the company’s apprentice program, has come to Spokane from a summer of singing with the Glimmerglass Opera in New York. For Parker, the role of the street-smart valet is a refreshing departure from the parts a bass-baritone usually sings. “We get the parts of fathers, or the Devil, or some other mean people,” Parker says. “Figaro is witty and clever. That’s a nice change.”

Says Mortier, “The Count has the upbringing and the education that teaches him how to play the game, but Figaro has the street smarts. The Count has all those emotions: he’s happy, he’s sad, he’s angry, he’s hurt. But he’s also a little dim-witted. There are times when he has that puzzled reaction, `Has someone just done something to me?”’

Parker, after his work in three different Glimmerglass Opera productions this summer and his performance of Figaro here, will return to Houston to perform the role of Masetto in Mozart’s “Don Giovanni.” He will also cover the role of Leporello in that production.

Parker says that Figaro may not be quite as smart as he thinks. “In the Figaro-Susanna couple, Susanna really runs the show,” Parker says, “Figaro thinks he’s smart, but Susanna is really the smart one. The love that we have right now is the love that the Count and Rosina had back in the `Barber of Seville.”’

In “Barber,” Figaro helped the Count win Rosina away from her lecherous guardian, Dr. Bartolo. In “Figaro,” he struggles to protect his own fiancee, Susanna, from the amorous designs of the Count.

“ I think the Count still loves Rosina,” Mortier says, “but the relationship has gotten stale somehow. Since he has the power to make things happen, he’s let his roving eye take over.

“Figaro can get away with a lot because he is so quick,” Mortier adds, “but the Count has the power behind him.”

Parker points out that Figaro and the Count have a sort of “buddy” relationship since in “Barber of Seville” Figaro helped win Rosina as the Count’s bride.

“Now that he’s the Count’s valet, there has to be a certain barrier of respect between them,” Parker says, “but that friendship is still there. They’re not really enemies in spite of the Count’s desire for Susanna.”

The story of “The Marriage of Figaro” is based on the second in a trilogy of 18th-century satirical plays by Pierre-Auguste Caron, known as Beaumarchais. The other two plays have also been turned into operas: The first of the series, “The Barber of Seville,” had already been successfully set to music by Giovanni Paisiello in 1782 by the time Mozart set “Figaro” in 1786, but Rossini created the definitive version of “The Barber” in 1816.

The last and most problematic of Beaumarchais’ three satires, “The Guilty Mother,” has eluded a successful operatic setting despite the efforts of Darius Milhaud in 1966 and John Corigliano in 1991.

Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” survived the intrigues of opening night opponents in Vienna to rise to the front rank of opera. This despite the fact that “Figaro” is, in the words of its original librettist, “not the shortest opera one can imagine.” And “Figaro” calls for an imposing cast of 11 principal roles (most opera of the time had about six). It tells a complicated story full of delightful intrigue.

Mozart’s librettist, Lorenzo da Ponte, re-created Beaumarchais’ play _ changing it from an occasionally tedious anti-establishment rant into a fast-moving operatic drama with real-life personalities. Opera historian Julian Rushton calls “The Marriage of Figaro” Mozart’s “most perfect and least problematic opera.”

Spokane Opera prepared the way for its “Figaro” by giving Rossini’s “Barber” last spring. The“Figaro” cast will feature Paul Linnes as Rosina’s former guardian Dr. Bartolo, Jessica Bowers as Bartolo’s former housekeeper (and once his mistress) Marcellina, Tom Williams as both the singing teacher Basilio and the lawyer Curzio, Kent Kimball as the Count’s gardener Antonio and Andrea Frey as Barbarina, the gardener’s daughter. James Scheopflin will conduct.

All performances will be sung in Ruth and Thomas Martin’s English translation of De Ponte’s Italian original.

OPERA “The Marriage Of Figaro” The Spokane Opera presents “The Marriage Of Figaro” Friday at 8 p.m. at The Met. Performances also on Saturday and Sept. 11 at 8 p.m., Wednesday and Sept. 9 at 7:30 p.m., and Sept 12 at 3 p.m. Ticket prices range from $14 to $36, available through all G&B Select-a-Seat outlets or by calling (800) 325-SEAT.