The size of the Metropolitan Opera can daunt even experienced artists. From the podium to the stage feels like a mile, and the proscenium is of yawning width and height. No opera benefits from chaos, but some pieces need especially precise discipline to make their impact — so they need conductors who can corral big forces across those sprawling distances.
It’s impressive when a veteran baton makes it all work. More so when it’s a newcomer like Joana Mallwitz, who made her Met debut this month leading Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro,” the kind of farcical comedy that quickly goes off the rails without a firm hand on the reins.
On Friday, midway through this season’s long run — lasting, with cast changes, through May 17 — Mallwitz was in calm, stylish command from the brisk overture on. Throughout the evening, she kept the orchestra sounding light and silky, allowing it to blend (instead of compete) with the charming singers.
The yearning winds that play during Cherubino’s aria “Non so più” are the echo of the character’s teenage longing, and Mallwitz guided those winds to soar more than usual, bringing out true sweetness and a hint of ache. Cherubino’s second big number, “Voi che sapete,” was accompanied with elegant clarity, each plucked pizzicato note in the strings present and unified without being overemphasized.
There was spirit and forward motion in this “Figaro.” But Mallwitz didn’t fall into the classic young conductor trap of shoving the performance toward extremes of tempo and dynamics (loud and fast, mostly) to convey intensity. In the long, zany, ebbing-and-flowing finale of the second act, she patiently paced the action, releasing tension then building it again, for an overall effect far zestier than if she’d merely kept her foot on the gas.
“Figaro” is sharing this stretch of standard-repertory revivals at the Met with Rossini’s “The Barber of Seville” — essentially a “Figaro” prequel, also adapted from a Beaumarchais play featuring some of the same characters — and, through Saturday, another Mozart classic, “The Magic Flute.”
This run of “Flute,” like “Figaro,” is benefiting from having a conductor who doesn’t try too hard to attract musical attention. On Wednesday, Evan Rogister led a performance that breathed naturally, exuding a sense of cheerful ease.
While it gets laughs, Simon McBurney’s staging feels less winning and more worn than it did when it was new to the Met two years ago. The concept is a blend of metatheatrical, fourth-wall-breaking fantasy and scruffy contemporary dress, with slight hints of a war going on. (Papageno’s weathered blue-and-yellow vest echoes the Ukrainian flag.)
But with live-drawn projections being created on one side of the stage, a foley artist making sound effects on the other, jokey interactions with the audience, a troupe of actors running around and the orchestra raised to full view — what am I leaving out? — the production ends up seeming scattered rather than suggestive.
A great “Flute” is one that balances silliness and solemnity, even sublimity. If that sober side was lacking on Wednesday, it may have been because the bass Stephen Milling, returning from the 2023 cast, was a Sarastro without the rich low register that are among this score’s glories. Thomas Oliemans, also returning as Papageno, had the right affable scrappiness for the show but not enough tonal robustness to fill the Met.
But the two leads, Ben Bliss and Golda Schultz, sang with melting poise, and Kathryn Lewek, one of the world’s leading Queens of the Night, managed to dash off her stratospheric arias without stinting nuance.
Now a decade old, Richard Eyre’s “Figaro” production has comfortably settled in with the company: handsome enough, amusing enough, clear enough. The staging resets the opera to 1930s Spain and a mansion of cylindrical rooms full of heavy Moorish woodwork, with upstairs-downstairs costumes inspired by the chic photographs of Jacques-Henri Lartigue.
This was an easygoing rather than urgent performance, with a youthful, well-matched cast. Federica Lombardi floated through the Countess’s arias, and gave the character the right mixture of reserve and vibrancy. Michael Sumuel was a friendly Figaro, and Olga Kulchynska a likable Susanna. Sun-Ly Pierce sang Cherubino’s arias gracefully; Joshua Hopkins was a Count Almaviva more genially confused by the changes in the world around him than enraged by them.
No individual element was spectacular. If it all ended up being more than the sum of its parts — a cohesive, enjoyable evening — that may have been because of Mallwitz, who brought everything together with confident control.
Zachary Woolfe is the classical music critic of The Times.
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