Oh yay, thank you for coming back and letting me know what you thought!
I feel simultaneously validated that the ensemble really did suck and it wasn't just me being super particular (which I know I can be about these things), and sad that indeed it really did suck. I have literally never heard a performance by Gardiner before where the ensemble wasn't pretty much perfect, so this was a big letdown for me. And yes, I also was not convinced by this Figaro, although I had thought it was the whole concept of a serious/angry Figaro, and I'm interested to see that you have liked others like that! Maybe it's just Gerhaher. (As you can see from the post, I strongly suspect Gerhaher was a large reason that things kept going awry with the ensemble, though I don't think he was the only reason.)
So I thought in many ways this really was a very modern-feeling 2019-ish Figaro, not in terms of the setting, of course, but it seemed very aware of class divisions and #MeToo in a way that in some ways is timeless (I mean, it's all there in Mozart!) but also in a way that I think would not have necessarily been directorial/actor choices, oh, ten years ago, including Keenlyside really leaning into the "creep" vibe. (Really interesting talking about this, too, right as the Domingo stuff is coming out...) There is a 2001 version of Figaro with Keenlyside on Youtube which I haven't watched much of yet but in which I believe SK is rather more of a conventional rake (although of course he was also 18 years younger then).
Yessss totally agree about Kim, both about the countertenor-playing-a-soprano thing working really well and that not many countertenors are going to be able to pull this off. It did make me realize that although I really loved him in the role and would definitely see him again, I would certainly bounce hard off any sort of masculine interpretation.
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Date: 2019-08-21 05:40 am (UTC)I feel simultaneously validated that the ensemble really did suck and it wasn't just me being super particular (which I know I can be about these things), and sad that indeed it really did suck. I have literally never heard a performance by Gardiner before where the ensemble wasn't pretty much perfect, so this was a big letdown for me. And yes, I also was not convinced by this Figaro, although I had thought it was the whole concept of a serious/angry Figaro, and I'm interested to see that you have liked others like that! Maybe it's just Gerhaher. (As you can see from the post, I strongly suspect Gerhaher was a large reason that things kept going awry with the ensemble, though I don't think he was the only reason.)
So I thought in many ways this really was a very modern-feeling 2019-ish Figaro, not in terms of the setting, of course, but it seemed very aware of class divisions and #MeToo in a way that in some ways is timeless (I mean, it's all there in Mozart!) but also in a way that I think would not have necessarily been directorial/actor choices, oh, ten years ago, including Keenlyside really leaning into the "creep" vibe. (Really interesting talking about this, too, right as the Domingo stuff is coming out...) There is a 2001 version of Figaro with Keenlyside on Youtube which I haven't watched much of yet but in which I believe SK is rather more of a conventional rake (although of course he was also 18 years younger then).
Yessss totally agree about Kim, both about the countertenor-playing-a-soprano thing working really well and that not many countertenors are going to be able to pull this off. It did make me realize that although I really loved him in the role and would definitely see him again, I would certainly bounce hard off any sort of masculine interpretation.