The Marriage of Figaro, London Coliseum

Unfolding over a single manic day, The Marriage of Figaro is an exhilarating delight that bustle with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s melodic genius. 

The Marriage of Figaro is among the greatest opera buffe ever written, a pinnacle of Mozart’s brilliant career. The plot, based on the play by French polymath Pierre Beaumarchais, bursts with comic misunderstandings, veiled identifies and surprising reversals, perfectly complimenting the score’s energy and inventiveness. 

Having secured his master’s marriage, crafty valet Figaro has finally fallen in love himself, with the maid Susanna. He’ll have to make his move quickly, though, as the philandering Count has the same idea.

When it was first performed in 2011, Fiona Shaw’s English-language staging was hailed as one of the finest in years. Now, for ten evenings and one matinee this October and the November, the English National Opera are offering us another chance to catch this rambunctious production with an all-new cast. 

Fiona Shaw is one of the most feted actors of her generation, equally vaunted for leading roles in the likes of Medea, Hedda Gabler and Mother Courage and Her Children and her incomparable one-woman performances of T. S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Since directing Vaughan Williams’ Riders to the Sea in 2008, she has branched out into music with a series of highly acclaimed operas with the ENO. 

Set within a rotating Escher-like labyrinth that symbolises the cast’s numerous romantic entanglements while creating an almost Kafka-esque sense of unease, Shaw’s production augments Mozart’s tightly-stuffed romp by emphasizing characterization and filling in every breathless gap. David Stout, one of international opera’s rising stars, plays the title role, with fellow young talents Mary Bevan and Benedict Nelson taking on Susanna and the Count – the future of English opera tackling one of the genre’s most dazzling heights.