News & Reviews

“The Marriage of Figaro” is slippery. Just when you think Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte are settling into sweet comedy, this 1786 opera has a way of skittering into farce. Just when “Figaro” seems content to trade on melodrama, it deepens toward tragedy....

For Richmond-born Matthew Burns, Friday’s opening of Virginia Opera’s “The Marriage of Figaro” at Richmond CenterStage will be a down-home family affair. Burns, a bass-baritone, will be singing opposite his wife, soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird, as ladies’ maid Susanna, who...

There are so many great moments in Mozart’s “The Marriage of Figaro” that can send an audience away happy — a meltingly beautiful “Dove Sono” from a lovelorn Countess, a comic turn or two from an oversexed Cherubino, or even the slapstick antics of duplicity and...

Funny, light, and lively, loaded with energy and crackling with wit, the Virginia Opera’s current production of Wolfgang Mozart’s comic opera The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) turns this beloved old warhorse into a comic confection that’s refreshingly new....

The brilliant Lillian Groag has been a favorite stage director for the Virginia Opera for the past 20 years. When former VO Artistic Director Peter Mark convinced her that her pristine reputation as a theater director, playwright and actor was an ideal requisite for...

What a week for Mozart!—beginning with The Marriage of Figaro at the Harrison Opera House April 6, followed by the powerful Requiem April 13. The Marriage of Figaro is, of course, built on the bones of a satire by noble-wannabe Pierre Beaumarchais, in which the clever...

Ah, sweet lunacy composed by a musical genius is coming this way. It is full of rascally, randy men and quietly patient, shrewd women who want a love that will last beyond the first “whoosh” of courtship. The score soars from the very first beat of the overture. On...

The Virginia Opera scored a home run Saturday evening when it brought back Mozart's always-popular "The Marriage of Figaro." Acknowledged as one of opera's supreme masterpieces, "Figaro" is the ultimate ensemble work. While any of the characters can steal the show, it...

In Mozart's comic opera "The Marriage of Figaro," the title character and his betrothed, Susanna, go to great lengths to remove obstacles to their love. By contrast, when bass-baritone Matthew Burns and soprano Anne-Carolyn Bird first played those roles together...

The Mozart opera that runs just four performances at the Harrison Opera House really shouldn’t be called The Marriage of Figaro, stage director Lillian Groag points out. “Figaro’s Wedding Day” would be a better translation of Le nozze di Figaro. The full name of the...