The 2009 WA Opera production of Figaro features a stellar cast and crew including Sara Macliver and James Clayton as the bridal couple. Guest conductor for the production is the Music Director of the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, Mischa Santora, who is brimming over with enthusiasm for conducting Figaro, describing it as a long held dream of his to conduct the piece.
‘It’s one of the greatest pieces of music ever composed and I adore Mozart personally, subjectively above and beyond the fact that he’s generally acknowledged to be one of the greatest composers. There are other great composers, other great geniuses, and even by those standards he’s in another category. I would call him one of the greatest minds in western civilisation.’
One of the elements of Mozart’s work that Santora finds particularly fascinating is that Mozart’s musical language in not rooted in the development of certain musical ideas, a characteristic which he says ‘makes it very different from Beethoven and Haydn in my opinion. He just has this incredible gift of coming up with unbelievably beautiful expressive and perfect melodies and the perfect accompaniment to it, and then, when he finishes one thought he doesn’t stick with elements of that thought as Beethoven would and just develop that and make a variation on it but he just comes up with something entirely new. And yet it’s perfectly harmonious, it’s connected, it doesn’t feel out of context.
While Santora identifies the musical journey of discovery over the last few months as a particularly exciting aspect of working on Figaro, he was also quick to praise the experience of working with WA Opera, the guest stars and in particular, stage director and former Young Artist Rachel McDonald, reflecting that the last few months have been a ‘wonderful rehearsal process of getting to know the piece, getting to know the individual singers as artists as people, working with the stage director intensely and discussing a lot of different things.’
Mischa Santora’s sojourn in WA has, from the sounds of it, all the joy of a happy ending at the opera, ‘It’s a real pleasure to be here, work with a truly first rate cast, a wonderful director and on one of the greatest pieces ever written so I couldn’t be happier.’
The Marriage of Figaro runs at His Majesty’s at until April 4th. Tickets are available through BOCS.
Zoe Carter
