LE NOZZE di FIGARO

MOZART/ DA PONTE

Nic McGegan, conductor

Marcus Shields, direction

Avery Reed, Costume design

Frank OLIVA, Scenic + Light design

Indah Mariana, Choreography

Adrian Yeun, Associate Light Design

We started working on Nozze in February of 2024. I’ve always struggled with Nozze as a performance text because, as a listener, I don’t initially connect to plot or narrative. As a single object, the opera has never successfully held together for me. Much of my work as a director is trying to communicate with others my own process for listening to and connecting with classical music. I notice patterns and shapes and I notice what is happening in real time with the performers on stage. So for this production, I tried to visualize that process onstage both to help myself and the audience hold the piece as a single object.

I feel like photos capture the beauty of the compositions and the stunning work of Frank Oliva and Avery Reed. However, the reality of this production that it was a total mess. From the beginning to the end of the show, it is about characters coming onstage and creating mess. Often this mess is confetti or fake flowers or dirt or annoying paper props that get torn up and tossed around. Some characters try to clean it up, but from scene to scene the mess accumulates and people have to figure out how to deal with it. Theatre has this wonderful slight-of-hand quality where depending on how you light objects and space, it can look disgusting or elegantly beautiful. Figaro is both things to me. Lots of mess, lots of ugly all contained in this absolutely gorgeous, Mozartian container.

We made this for and with the Curtis community and much of what ended up onstage was a result of full group contribution.

DIRECTOR’s NOTE from the program

At the time of writing this note, we are midway through the process, and if all goes well, the show you are about to see will be meaningfully different from the one I set out to make a year ago. I believe that the creative process should result in something unexpected that bears the influence of all the collaborators, performers, and realities of production. When my team and I set out to make this production of Le Nozze di Figaro, I was thinking about the work of Richard Serra, Anne Imhof, and Doug Wheeler, three artists who made/make work about space and perception. I was also thinking about the cycles of personal relationships—how they can start pristine and unblemished and, through the process of living, loving, fighting, and forgiving, come to bear the marks of these cycles. In my own life, I was experiencing the very human project of marriage and commitment and learning for myself that there is immense beauty in the mess of these cycles. Over the past four weeks, I’ve been thinking about authenticity on stage and the way in which Nozze, in its immense brilliance and challenge, demands authenticity from all involved. 

This set is a minimal space of three walls that shift and change throughout the opera, first expanding and then eventually breaking apart altogether. Over the evening, the plots, situations, deceptions, and disguises result in a big, literal mess. From act to act, this mess accumulates until all the characters are forced to sit in the chaos and figure out how to move forward.