By Jane Rosenberg
If you like a little flash and dazzle with your Marriage of Figaro, Los Angeles Opera’s production, opening March 21, has it. After all who wouldn’t enjoy a pyrotechnical display at the end of one’s wedding festivities? And that’s exactly what Figaro and his bride Susanna have in store. Following the scheming to keep Susanna out of the clutches of Count Almaviva, following the disguises, the flirting, the jealousies, and the mistaken identities, and after the moment when everyone is restored to their rightful partners, we have Mozart’s touching conclusion followed by the onstage landscape ablaze with the light, color, and thunderous crackling of fireworks.
Members of the press were treated to a preview on Friday morning courtesy of LA Opera’s Technical Director Jeff Kleeman and Pyrotechnician Tom Newman. According to Newman, the fireworks at the finale of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro are similar to those sports fans see at Dodger Stadium. At the stadium, aerials can rocket to one hundred feet. On the stage of the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion amidst the topiary and cypress trees, which dot Count Almaviva’s estate, the aerials shoot a more modest twenty-five feet. Nevertheless, it should be enough to please the roughly three thousand spectators in the audience and rouse the hearts of the forever scheming and always-exuberant Figaro and Susanna on the evening of their nuptials.
Timed to the musical finale, two dozen pyrotechnic devices are set to explode at the back of the Pavilion’s stage. With a sharp perspective created by lining the stage with dramatically receding cypresses and topiary, and with a large full moon beaming down on the Count’s villa, the fireworks erupt as if on the distant grounds of the estate. So move over Hollywood Bowl and the 1812 Overture, and make room for the sparkling sound and light show of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
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Photos By Bonnie Perkinson
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To read more opera, dance and music reviews by Jane Rosenberg click HERE.
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Jane Rosenberg is the author and illustrator of SING ME A STORY: The Metropolitan Opera’s Book of Opera Stories for Children. Jane is also the author and illustrator of DANCE ME A STORY: Twelve Tales of the Classic Ballets.
The International Review of Music 