John Corigliano

One of my favourite, sadly rarely-produced, modern operas.

John Corigliano's opera premiered at the Met in 1991 and has had major productions at the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1995) and Los Angeles Opera (2015). It is based on La Mère coupable, the final play in Beaumarchais' Figaro trilogy. All three plays were adapted into operas numerous times, but of course we are familiar with the first two installments: The Barber of Seville (Rossini) and The Marriage of Figaro (Mozart). Versailles, however, is a different kind of adaptation, more of a reworking.

Years after her death in the French Revolution, Marie Antoinette and her court are depressed ghosts, loitering pointlessly at Versailles as they mourn the world they have lost. Beaumarchais, also a ghost in her world, is in love with the Queen and determines to both win her love and rewrite history, to save her from the guillotine. To do so, Beaumarchais stages an elaborate new Figaro play, and the lines between their "real" world and the fictional world quickly begin to blur.

A self-consciously "grand" opera, which often parodies conventions of both Mozart's age and others, Corigliano's work is extravagant and thus expensive, which is one reason its performances have been limited. But it offers gorgeous opportunities from a technical standpoint and a musical one. The score presents faux-Mozartian jewels (Figaro's grand aria, particularly), contemporary classical writing, especially in the vocal line for Marie Antoinette, and delicious character pieces, from the self-consciously evil villain Bégearss to the (deliberate) Oriental stereotype of the Turkish singer Samira, performed at the work's premiere by Marilyn Horne, and in 2015 by Patti LuPone.

Utterly bonkers but continuously exquisite, with enough to entertain both the old school and the new. It would be a delight to see the three 'Figaro' operas performed by a company in a single year, but sadly Corigliano's work remains one of those obscure gems.… (altro)