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.
