Start with a university opera. One with very few seniors in the company and a whole lot of students in leadership roles. What do you perform? Something simple? Something easy?
Try Mozart. Yes, that Mozart.
A week from today, Emporia State University will open “The Marriage of Figaro” at Albert Taylor Hall. It’s an opera that’s been notoriously successful ever since its first performance in 1786. It’s also quite a test for any aspiring singer.
“It’s really challenging, certainly,” said Maria Stukey, who plays Susanna, the female lead. “Mozart is such a challenging composer. And since it’s all singing, no dialogue, it’s taxing for sure.”
That especially took some getting used to for Stukey, a drama major who is appearing in her first opera.
“It started as a lark,” she said. “If you take voice, you have to have an ensemble performance. And I ended up, eventually, with this.”
It’s been a show that’s required everyone to stretch themselves. There’s a student lighting designer, a student costumer, even a student conductor in the pit. But director Penny Speedie has never had any doubts about the result.
“I knew I could cover the roles pretty easily and they were roles the kids could grow into,” she said about her decision to choose the opera. “And Mozart is always healthy for the voice. He’s wonderful for the voice.”
That she knows from experience. Speedie has appeared in several previous productions of “The Marriage of Figaro,” usually as Susanna.
The opera is based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais which is said to have encouraged French revolutionaries because of the way it depicted servants and masters. On the surface, the story almost looks like a bedroom farce: Figaro, the valet to County Almaviva, is about to be married to his love, the count’s maid Susanna — whom the count is doing his best to seduce. Meanwhile, the count is sure his wife is cheating on him with a page, while the countess works with Figaro and his love to try to embarrass the count. And then there’s the older woman who shows up and claims that Figaro promised to marry her ....
But beneath the comic plot and double-dealings are some very deep characters. For example, below the surface of Figaro himself is a fair amount of bitterness. In an earlier Beaumarchais play, “The Barber of Seville,” he had helped the count meet and marry the countess. Now that Figaro has found his own love, he’s rightfully angered at the count’s attempts at sabotage.
“It’s the depth of the inner life, the inner conflicts going on, that makes the farce really work,” Speedie said.
Mozart wrote the opera rapidly, though the claim that it was finished in six weeks appears to be legend. It caught on immediately, with the audience demanding so many encores on opening night that the repeated music doubled the length of the show. The Austrian emperor Joseph II ended up banning encores in the opera because they had become so tedious.
For a modern-day cast, part of the challenge is learning how to re-enter that time — how to move, how to stand, how to gesture. And that’s leaving aside the music. With Mozart at the controls, it can be more complex and interconnected than any jigsaw puzzle ever made.
“The ensembles are not ‘Here, learn these four parts,’” Speedie said. “If there’s nine characters on stage, there may be nine parts.”
But it’s also one of those shows that happens to be pure fun, for both the cast and the audience. No lasting harm is done, servants show up their masters, and the ladies get a chance to show who’s really in charge.
“The men do nothing,” Speedie said.
“They succeed at nothing,” Stukey corrected.
“The men succeed at nothing,” Speedie agreed. “The women make everything happen.”
“The Marriage of Figaro” runs April 13 and 14 at Albert Taylor Hall. The doors open at 7 p.m. and the opera begins at 7:30 p.m. All tickets are general seating, costing $4 for ESU students and seniors and $5 for everyone else.