photos: Sherif Sonbol

Sweet pontifical

By David Blake

Can anything about Mozart's Figaro astonish anymore? Yes, the new opening season's Arabic production at the Al-Gomhouriya Theatre did. The stage at the lovable Al-Gomhouriya is small, crampy at the sides and not deep. But it did not matter to the two creators of this production which moved the little theatre well into the next century.

Figaro is so clever it brings out the worst in one. Can't anyone sink it? Almost everyone has during the last 100 years, but it floats straight back to the surface, bouncier than ever. Even its buoyancy can be tiresome. All these people dashing about on stage, doing absolutely nothing but get on each others' nerves -- and there is such a lot of it. It is famously longer than the blue Danube, which goes on forever.

All the irrelevancies of Figaro, its obese little jokes, have been ironed out in this production and what we get is a straight run down the centre of the opera with not as much as a glance at what's going on in the dressing rooms at the sides. We get a conversation farce set quite alarmingly to Mozart's capricious dazzle of notes. These notes are positively electric and fly up and out of the score, often magnified by the composer's handling of them into grouplets and airborne combinations.

Sitting in one's seat at Al-Gomhouriya has been a unique pleasure and, more, a sort of mad treasure box of the times, a mobile phone sparklingly created out of some new metal. All this has been the work of Sherif Mohieddin and his wonderful light-fingered release of the score from most of its century-old encrustations. He performs magic feats, like Merlin, out of time-worn rags. To make an audience positively enjoy the length of Figaro is a feat hardly to be met with. Mohieddin did, and he makes a new opera out of it.

The other creator of this production is the new, young Cairo Opera Company director Abdallah Saad. He has made the look of it, the sound of it and the pace of it into a sort of Bavarian-Rococo trip through the forests of Nymphenberg. He and Mohieddin have together made something intimate and "family" out of its absurdities, a genuine dwelling at its home base near Munich where, in spite of the libretto, it obviously roosts.

The stage puppets of Figaro have been turned into a troublesome, willful, mischievous gang, everyone of whom knows the other's business. And, yet another miracle, they are not tiresome. Mohieddin and Saad have put the opera back where it belongs, not at the diamond horseshoe of the New York Met with Mahler creating primeval fire, but at a rather country house singspiel. From beginning to end everyone sings perfectly in tune, exactly to the tempo set by the maestro and the actions dictated by the producer who is sensitive to their especial type of glamour, absurd as well as laconic.

The endless landscapes of Figaro pass like a dream drive. Arias, arriettas, trios, entire chorus ensembles -- everyone sings. It is really what opera houses are for. The small but grand spaces of Al-Gomhouriya positively resounded to the sounds of the Cairo Opera Orchestra and its entire group of friends on stage. No one cares about opera gossip; it's the results that matter. And the results of this Figaro? It was loving, caring and humorous.

And luminous. Under their maestro the singers were never forced. He seemed for this production to have a gift of weight and balance in all the ensembles which flew along through a score which is too often unendurably long and full of chirpy recitatives.

The characters emerge in Act I, centering on the Count as performed by Reda El-Wakil: tall, indolent, insolent, high-mannered and sexy when required. Figaro, Raouf Zaidan, cannot step wrongly. He turns himself into a figure presented almost as pure music and the voice wears easily along its endless path.

Susanna, who opens the opera to the news of her coming marriage, is one of Mozart's mysteries. Not chilly like Pamina or stupid like most of Mozart's other heroines, she is warm, practical and deeply devoted to Figaro, even to the extent of giving him a good bashing when necessary. All these things glowed in what is Mona Rafla's most perfect performance, and her voice settled into the music with time and space to spare, her tone full of the lovely person who sings it. Rare Mozart. This Susanna graced the house.

Act II introduces Mozart's Countess, a role for a prima donna whose position the composer promptly undermines by haunting her throughout the opera by Susanna. It is here that Abdallah Saad makes one of his best moves as producer. Having the talents of two female voices of quality -- Allouba Countess and Rafla Susanna -- he manages to show the extreme character difference between the two. The Countess is easy-going; she'll one day, after she is tired of her wandering Count, take her own choice and probably disappear over the Alps with another. Allouba does everything, acting the rather indifferent, frisky aristocrat whose kindness of heart makes her sing the difficult music and the character it represents secure and solid. Her voice and Rafla's make bell sounds as they ripple and flash through the music, Susanna adding the deeper tone. Such tempos these media days are to dream of.

No drag queens in this production. Cherubino, Hala El-Shabouri, was a surprise packet. No silly bouncy or mincing girl-dressed-as-boy. She was solid, completely sincere and sang the music with tones to ravish. The Cairo Opera has another treasure to unveil soon in El-Shabouri. Mohieddin never forced her tones and she kept relentlessly to his timing. The sound effect was brilliant.

Act III brings the star pieces of the opera to the fore: Cherubino's "Voi che Sapete" and the aria "Dove Sono" which covers the empty territory of the Countess's empty and fatuously stupid marriage. Allouba wove her way through "Dove Sono", soon to be accompanied by the creamy tones of Rafla's Susanna which makes the duet a sort of lament for a lost life. The two women are the only real characters in this opera. The rest of them are watermelons.

Comes the end -- finally. In a garden with the Count's castle lit from inside, it is elegiac and full of lost love and regrets. Not even the bird-like flights of the famous letter scene in which Countess and Susanna plot the Count's downfall can lift the music. Only one thing can -- and does: Susanna's dream aria "Deh Vieni non Tada", the crucial heart of the opera which willfully permits Susanna to walk away with the production, something Mona Rafla proceeded to do.

Count is erased, but smiles his way back centre stage, the white and glowing Countess dazzles and Susanna and her Figaro walk quietly away with the opera.

This Figaro was like a lantern lit and left glowing in the dark. The opera's over. There's a time to laugh and a time to cry. Saad and Mohieddin are too clever to chose. It is we the audience who must chose.