Review: Anthony Roth Costanzo Sings Every Role in The Marriage of Figaro at Little Island

I first heard Anthony Roth Costanzo sing “Voi che sapete” from Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro when he was 17. He played the obviously queer, opera obsessed teenager Francis Fortescue in the 1998 Merchant-Ivory film A Soldier’s Daughter Never Cries. As an obviously gay, opera obsessed teenager living in deepest, darkest Ohio, it made me feel a little less alone.

It would thrill me enough to hear Costanzo (now 42, a superstar countertenor, and the general director of Opera Philadelphia) sing the role of Cherubino in a traditional staging of Figaro. But enough is not enough for Costanzo, who has thrown tradition to the wind by conceiving and starring in a new production of Figaro that has just opened at the Amphitheater on Little Island.

He plays Cherubino all right. But he also sings the roles of the servant Figaro, his fiancé Susanna, their philandering employer Count Almaviva, his tragically neglected Countess, the music teacher Basilio, the gardener Antonio, and his daughter Barbarina — gleefully prancing across three-and-a-half octaves. It’s something he did briefly during Only an Octave Apart, his concert with Justin Vivian Bond, and it makes for a neat party trick when you’re only doing one number. But here Costanzo goes on for over 90 minutes, never faltering. It’s the operatic equivalent of a Simone Biles floor routine.

The opening scenes, in which Figaro measures the space for his connubial bed and Susannah clues him into the fact that their new room is close to the Count’s chamber for a less-than-noble reason, set a feverish pace. Costanzo sings and acts every role, slamming doors and whipping off costumes as black-clad stagehands attempt to keep up like harried kuroko in a Kabuki theater. It feels an awful lot like a nightmare the artistic director of an opera company might have following a round of budget cuts.

But as the evening progresses, the stagehands slip into Bode’s colorful period costumes (I especially appreciated the curtain tassels on the Count’s coat) and begin to embody the characters. Costanzo still physically portrays the lovesick teenager Cherubino and sings every role, but he suddenly has co-stars who are giving lip sync performances that could stand up on the runway of RuPaul’s Drag Race.

Christopher Bannow plays Figaro with a suitably goofy swagger. Emma Ramos lends Susannah a mischievous grin. As the Countess, Daniel Liu mines humor from the deepest melancholy (I defy you not to laugh as she stress-eats cake at the end of Act II). Ariana Venturi menacingly stomps around the stage as the mustachioed Count. And as Antonio, the production has enlisted acrobat Ryan Shinji Murray, whose virtuosity on the trampoline sends the pandemonium of the second act into the stratosphere. It’s wild in the best way.

The endlessly inventive director Dustin Wills proves to be the ideal ringmaster for this operatic circus, which honors the comedic spirit of Lorenzo Da Ponte’s libretto while making liberal revisions to convey the revolutionary significance of Pierre Beaumarchais’s original play (I suspect dramaturg Jacob Mallison Bird also had a hand in this). While the runtime has been slashed in half, the farcical story remains solid and none of the major arias are missing.

Wills has regularly blurred the line between actor and stage crew (recently in Eugene Onegin), calling on the performers to build the set in front of a paying audience and creating little spectacles with household items. This set (designed by Wills and Lisa Laratta) follows in that vein, with little pockets of hidden wonder revealing themselves throughout the performance. It is all beautifully lit by Barbara Samuels, who employs a mixture of high-tech stage lights and low-tech footlights to illuminate a production that straddles the line between old and new.

Dan Schlosberg’s arrangements for an eight-person orchestra are similarly resourceful. They keyboard is set to harpsichord (the only suitable accompaniment for Mozart recitative), but a saxophone and electric guitar fold into the mix later as sections of the score seem to audibly melt.

Sound designer Sun Hee Kil has engineered perfect balance in the outdoor amphitheater. She cleverly deploys looping to create the group numbers, including the magnificently complex second act finale. Costanzo is wisely mic’d, undergirding his already pristine diction, which will make you feel like you actually understand Italian.

A marvelously expressive actor, Costanzo is vocally damn near perfect. He gives Figaro a hearty baritone, beautifully exhibited during “Se vuol ballare, signor Contino” and “Non più andrai.” His “Voi che sapete” is the best it has ever been, more connected to the lyrics and awash in puckish fun. He captures the Countess’s shimmering sadness in “Porgi Amor” and “Dove sono.” For Susannah he delivers a particularly lovely rendition of “Deh vieni, non tardar,” the upper notes floating in on the light breeze from the Hudson River.

The other actors finally join him in song during the fourth act finale, liberating their own voices to exuberantly proclaim “Corriam tutti a festeggiar” (“let’s all rush to celebrate”).  It’s Mozart for the piano bar, and a particularly joyous way to conclude this production that is a delight from beginning to end. Yes, opera really can be this much fun.