Marriage Of Figaro

Carrying a tune wasn't a criteria for playing a famous opera role at the 26th annual Annapolis Opera Gala. Instead of formal wear, some of the 125 guests came in costumes (rented from the opera company) to the benefit at the U.S. Naval Academy Officers Club.Opera president Anna Marie Darlington-Gilmour took on "Tosca" togs. Opera guild president Frances O'Brien was made up as Madame Butterfly. Anne Arundel Community College adjunct professor Mary Coleman and naval architect Jim Coleman borrowed from "La Boheme," as did silent auction co-chair Lesley Robinson.

The French playwright Beaumarchais thought of his great "Figaro" trilogy as a political statement that undermined the rigid class structure of 18th-century Europe.But somehow, in "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro," he got past polemics and created characters who took on a life of their own.Figaro and Susannah, the clever barber and his equally smart wife, and the hotblooded young page, Cherubino, have been adopted by playwrights and composers ever since they made their literary debut in 1784.

Quibble with this or that, but when all is said and done, opera is about glorious singing. When the voices are there, you can live with all the other stuff that might go wrong.By this standard, the Annapolis Opera's recent production of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was a rousing success. Wherever you turned, you heard talented young singers doing wonderful things with Mozart's exquisite melodies and characters.In Thomas Zielinski, the production had a top-notch Figaro whose tonal depth gave opera's most celebrated valet the guts to tell off his aristocratic employer with stylish conviction in "Se vuol ballare," but whose agility made the tough coloratura passages in Act IV's "Tutto e disposto" dance with expertly controlled energy.

The finals of Annapolis Opera's 10th annual Maryland Vocal Competition, held at Maryland Hall for the Creative Arts Sunday afternoon, were proof that the local company is attracting high-caliber talent.Of the eight finalists, who had to be living or studying in Maryland to be eligible for the competition, five are high-quality singers, and there were things to like about the other three. Each of the three top finishers could have been named the winner with ample justification. It was that close.

Quibble with this or that, but when all is said and done, opera is about glorious singing. When the voices are there, you can live with all the other stuff that might go wrong.By this standard, the Annapolis Opera's recent production of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was a rousing success. Wherever you turned, you heard talented young singers doing wonderful things with Mozart's exquisite melodies and characters.In Thomas Zielinski, the production had a top-notch Figaro whose tonal depth gave opera's most celebrated valet the guts to tell off his aristocratic employer with stylish conviction in "Se vuol ballare," but whose agility made the tough coloratura passages in Act IV's "Tutto e disposto" dance with expertly controlled energy.

Mozart has become something of a lost art for the current generation of conductors, so in search of a recorded "Marriage of Figaro" performance to live with, we can push Claudio Abbado, Zubin Mehta, Daniel Barenboim and James Levine off the end of the sleigh and not think twice.None of them sparkle enough to merit lasting attention.Steer clear of the eminent Herbert von Karajan as well. When he was good in Mozart, he was very good (accompanying Dennis Brain in the Mozart French horn concertos, for example)

The Peabody Institute's production of "The Marriage of Figaro" makes a virtue of small means.Limited by a Spartan budget, the production, through tomorrow at Friedberg Concert Hall, is minimal. The set, devised by Barbara Thompson, is nothing more than a few hanging panels and some rococo architectural etchings; and the costumes (by John Lehmeyer) are made on one pattern of one fabric.This could have been a recipe for tedium but, instead, leaves us free to marvel at the musical and dramatic riches of the opera, which is one of Mozart's perfect achievements.

One of the women who served as the inspiration for the film "A League of Their Own" will be the featured speaker at a Dec. 7 breakfast sponsored by the Greater Severna Park Chamber of Commerce.The breakfast is set for 8 a.m. to 9:30 a.m. at the Severna Park Library on McKinsey Road.The guest speaker will be Dr. Florence Blanck of the Severna Park Chiropractic Center, who played in the All American Girls Baseball League, which was featured in the movie. The league was formed during World War II, when many major league baseball players were in the armed forces.

Everyone eventually checks out of the Hotel Eden -- they have to.But the Peabody Conservatory of Music is betting that "Hotel Eden," a new comic opera about three couples who can't seem to get along in Paradise, will want to make audiences check in. This 1989 opera, which receives its East Coast premiere at Friedberg Hall this Thursday, has Peabody Opera Theater director Roger Brunyate rapturously evoking Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" when he speaks about...

Drastic cuts in state funding forced the Peabody Conservatory to stage Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" without sets, save for a few simple doorways and furniture.But make no mistake. In every other way, this is a spirited, professional production which well serves the reputation of the nationally known music school.Much of the credit for that success, surely, must rest with Roger Brunyate, who has made Mozart a staple of Peabody's opera program since becoming its artistic director in 1980. This "Figaro" is functional but elegant -- and after seeing the "hip" vagaries of Peter Sellars' Mozart operas, Mr. Brunyate's vision is infinitely more attractive.

PAUL "DUKE" HOGUE, 69 Cincinnati, Baltimore basketball star Paul "Duke" Hogue, a star center on the University of Cincinnati's back-to-back national championship basketball teams, died Monday in Cincinnati of heart and kidney failure, said Patti Hogue, his wife of 43 years. The 6-foot-9-inch center helped lead the Bearcats to NCAA championships in 1961 and 1962, both times defeating Jerry Lucas-led Ohio State squads in the title games. Mr. Hogue was chosen the most outstanding player in the 1962 NCAA tournament.

Peel away the surfaces of Mozart's peerless comic opera The Marriage of Figaro and you can find some dark things going on. Poor Figaro learns that he was born out-of-wedlock. And his fiancee, Susanna, has to keep fighting off the pursuits of a philandering aristocrat who thinks someone passed an Offence to Marriage Act that entitles him to bed any bride before the groom. If you go Peabody Opera Theatre performs The Marriage of Figaro at 7:30 tonight and 3 p.m. tomorrow at Peabody Institute, 17 E. Mount Vernon Place.

May 1--1786: Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro premiered in Vienna, Austria. 1931: New York's Empire State Building was dedicated. 1948: The People's Democratic Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed. 1971: Amtrak - which combined 18 intercity passenger railroads - went into service.

Mozart's 250th birthday celebration continued with verve last weekend as the Annapolis Chorale and Annapolis Chamber Orchestra ran the gamut from symphony to opera to ballet to choral work in an evening that spanned Mozart's career. The program, led by the Annapolis Chorale's J. Ernest Green, started with Mozart's Symphony No. 1, composed at age 8, and than covered an opera, The Impresario, from his late-middle career; a ballet excerpt from The Marriage of Figaro from the same period; and Requiem, his final work.

In 1786, when it was new, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro represented a fresh set of operatic values for an audience and a fresh set of artistic challenges for performers. Here was a comedy that wasn't strictly for laughs, but had lots of heart, too. And here was an opera that required singers to act with every bit as much inspiration and conviction as they could muster for the music. In many ways, Figaro transformed the opera world, setting a new standard for what composers and librettists could create together, what a cast could achieve together.

Human beings will always be good for a laugh, especially when they're in full pursuit of sex. This makes them a continual subject for low, lower and lowest-brow entertainment -- check out almost any TV sitcom today for a demonstration. More brain cell-active studies of this behavior can, of course, produce valuable insights alongside the chuckles. Occasionally, as in the comedies of Shakespeare, an observer of these mortal fools will even fashion from their foibles the stuff of real art. And once in a great, great while -- only once in the past 219 years, I would argue -- the human condition can inspire the creation of something not just amusing, but profoundly rewarding and impossibly beautiful.

Today marks an auspicious event in South County - the launching of a concert series at London Town House and Gardens in Edgewater. Patterned after the European concept of individually sponsored concerts in elegant surroundings, all three concerts in the series will be held on the banks of South River at the historic site. Wallace Treiber, president of the South County Concert Association, and Carol Treiber, executive director of the Cultural Arts Foundation, will sponsor tonight's concert to start the series.

For a mix of humor, sentiment and truth, Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro" remains impossible to beat. The sight gags are as reliable for a laugh as those in "I Love Lucy" reruns. And when the Countess tells us about the ache in her heart over a faithless husband she still hopelessly loves, or when that louse of a spouse finally begs forgiveness, Mozart transcends the artifice of theater to uncover the very nature of human relations. And then there is the music - effortless, indelible melodies that communicate jokes and emotions with equal suppleness; orchestration that exudes as much color and subtlety as a Fragonard painting.

Carrying a tune wasn't a criteria for playing a famous opera role at the 26th annual Annapolis Opera Gala. Instead of formal wear, some of the 125 guests came in costumes (rented from the opera company) to the benefit at the U.S. Naval Academy Officers Club.Opera president Anna Marie Darlington-Gilmour took on "Tosca" togs. Opera guild president Frances O'Brien was made up as Madame Butterfly. Anne Arundel Community College adjunct professor Mary Coleman and naval architect Jim Coleman borrowed from "La Boheme," as did silent auction co-chair Lesley Robinson.

Quibble with this or that, but when all is said and done, opera is about glorious singing. When the voices are there, you can live with all the other stuff that might go wrong.By this standard, the Annapolis Opera's recent production of Mozart's "Marriage of Figaro" was a rousing success. Wherever you turned, you heard talented young singers doing wonderful things with Mozart's exquisite melodies and characters.In Thomas Zielinski, the production had a top-notch Figaro whose tonal depth gave opera's most celebrated valet the guts to tell off his aristocratic employer with stylish conviction in "Se vuol ballare," but whose agility made the tough coloratura passages in Act IV's "Tutto e disposto" dance with expertly controlled energy.