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Me I’m not one of those actors who spent their lives in theater or film thinking, “I wish I could have directed that”. However, at the beginning of this year, I found myself with an unexpected six-week gap. The originally planned project was delayed for technical reasons, and it was at this point that Wild Arts game designer Max Parfitt asked how I knew The Marriage of Figaro.
I have had a Mozart opera for as long as I can remember. “Susan”Ah, come on, don’t be late“He was one of the first musicians I played with, when I was 12 or 13, studying in Los Angeles.” Later, I wrote my final high school paper on Figaro, adapting from Beaumarchais’s play to Da Ponte’s libretto. I performed my first Susanna on the same stage in New York a few years later, and since then I have performed the play many times around the world.
“I could sing it in my sleep!” I laughed at Max. I think he already had his doubts. He asked me if I would consider directing a new production of Figaro. Conductor Orlando Jopling they had written a limited number of songs for 10 people, there was little, a small budget and 20 different places during a three-month summer tour of the UK.
“Ah… I didn’t think to correct it,” I said. Working with a director – and I’ve had the opportunity to work with some amazing ones, from mentors like Jonathan Miller to Richard Eyre and Robert Carsen – is one of the relationships I appreciate the most and one of the best relationships in the training room. Why would I want to switch sides? But then I pondered. When I do advanced training, I spend time with musicians, guiding them on how to sing, how to let their emotions guide them and be a conductor of music instead of a pageboy. Maybe I can lead, I thought. When you’re stuck in a job, opportunities to turn your skills into something new are rare.
Should I try? What’s the worst that could happen? Will it be wrong? I don’t feel well?
In any case, I don’t want to be the director all the time, I thought. I have an amazing job all over the world, often in new products and new creative projects. My mother, Beverly, always told us children to “Dare to dream” and I have lived this life every day of my career. It would be better to try and fail than not try at all, I thought. And so I agreed.
Because this opera is in my DNA, my preparation was not to study the text, but to think about it from the point of view of creating a piece of character and character, as opposed to acting, where you can contribute to your entire role.
Knowing the parts that were already there (several spaces meaning that the space should be small and flexible, at least) there was no chance that I would put it in the space or in a modern Parisian house. My Figaro is set in the 18th century, the time it was written. But in any case, for me the most important thing is that every person should be honest, and everything they do should be reasonable. As an actor on stage, I can’t do anything unless I understand my character and why he makes his decisions.
I hate the idea of falling into tropes and treading lightly because that’s how it always is. I think Figaro has a lot of strings like that. The Count is often played as a small sound. His family surrounds him, and he is always the last to know what is going on. Cherubino, also, a young page, must be anywhere between 13 and maybe 17, but you often find him playing as a very happy girl who can’t control his legs and the moon is waving his hands and making silly faces. Even musicians who have never played the part have started with some of these habits.
I want everything to sound non-pantomimic. Yes, Figaro is a joke, a joke, but the authenticity of the plot depends on each actor portraying their character and each plot faithfully. If one does not do that then the regimes will fall. From the beginning of the repetition, each moment must have harmony and dissonance.
The last act of the opera – where the Count asks the Countess for forgiveness – is very difficult, but in several acts it is possible to hear the voice. How is it possible for a self-centered comedy to sincerely apologize for Mozart’s tragic music? In order for the audience to believe and be affected at that moment the director has to copy the opportunity in the Count from the first appearance. You have to pull it back.
When I’m doing Susanna myself, I always feel that you only have 10 minutes for the audience to fall in love with her and Figaro – two duets and two recitatives, and if you only do them as an introduction, how can the audience care about how they’re going to be married? Whatever I create, I want Susanna and Figaro to be seen as a couple in love so that the audience invests in them and their happiness as they try to overcome the challenges that come their way.
As a translator myself, I have been able to train the singers in delivery, making sure that everything is spoken with words and meaning and remember that no lines can be delivered on “I know it’s my next line”. Singing in English will mean that British people will be able to detect the wrong tone. Every touch, every raised eyebrow, every breath and every word counts.
A great drama can turn you from a spectator into a participant. That’s my biggest hope for this production, and making the leap into the unknown at this point in a well-known career is difficult, but very exciting. And it’s been a lot of fun finding ways to make four boxes, six screens, four chairs and a tree – I took my son’s old blocks, cut construction paper into pieces for the sides and tried turning each side to make different parts of the set.
Orlando and I recently had a conversation together. “Figaro is a very good opera. It’s hard to mess it up,” I said. Orlando replied, “Figaro is a good opera; it is hard to fix it!” We laughed and had a fun argument on camera. What I mean is that the music is perfect and loved, how can that be? But there is a problem here. People can enjoy the night of Figaro even if you participate in all its rituals. But that’s not where I hang around. The real challenge – and the real joy – is to break through the well-trodden path of cliche to tell a story that is not only funny and touching, but serious and, most importantly, real.
Natural ArtA production of The Marriage of Figaro directed by Danielle de Niese opens at Layer Marney Tower, Essex, on 5 June, before we go across England and Wales until 27 September.
Danielle de Niese was talking to him Imogen Tilden
