The ultimate rom-com that may make an opera convert out of you

This new production has everything you could want from a rom-com, including more relationship tangles than a Richard Curtis film. Check out our review.

A scene from the Marriage of Figaro, currently at QPAC. Picture: Jeremy Kleeman

You have a hankering to get into opera? Go on, admit it, we’re all friends here.

Well if you do The Marriage of Figaro is a good place to start. It’s funny, fast paced and the music is vivacious and at times nothing short of sublime.

I mean we’re talking Mozart people, of the Wolfgang Amadeus variety. It’s amazing stuff, brilliantly played under conductor Dane Lam - one of our most exciting young talents.

His wife, Sofia just happens to play the female lead, Susanna, by the way, which is a nice aside.

It helps that the music is so gorgeous because this opera is three hours long, including an interval. I normally have a two-hour limit but I can handle three if a production is good. And this one is, it’s very good. It’s funny, even hilarious at times with some brilliant little touches. What a hoot when creepy Count Almaviva (Jose Carbo) is caught sniffing coke.

The Countess (Eva Kong) and the Count (Jose Carbo) have a moment in The Marriage of Figaro. Photo Jade Ferguson

Did they sniff coke in 1786 which is when the opera was composed? Not sure but this is a contemporary setting anyway with some heritage reference points. Personally I prefer a period piece costume-wise because I’m a bit of a traditionalist but hey, that’s just me.

Director Patrick Nolan, who seems to have a magic touch, has contemporised it but it’s largely intact. He did draw connections between this opera and Seinfeld and Fawlty Towers and you can certainly see that on stage. The confusion and slapstick is all very Basil Fawlty. It has been pointed out that this opera also deals with certain issues of power and sexual politics but I don’t like to overthink it or read too much into it. I take it as it is and it’s fun even without subtext.

The story revolves around Susanna (Troncoso on opening night, a role she shares with Katie Stenzel) and her betrothed Figaro (Jeremy Kleeman and later Timothy Newton) who both work for the creepy Count who wants to cheat on his wife with Susanna.

The Countess is played by Brisbane soprano Eva Kong and she is utterly brilliant and gets one of the great fashion moments in a glittering pant suit created by designer Marg Horwell. The other great moment is the hoop dress that Hayley Sugars wears in her role as Marcellina. That is priceless.

Baritone Jeremy Kleeman is outstanding in The Marriage of Figaro. Photo Jade Ferguson

To run you through the plot would be tedious but it’s sufficient to say there are numerous couples involved, much confusion, some skulduggery but in the end love finds a way to resolve everything and even the naughty old Count is redeemed and reunited with his missus. Jose Carbo’s rendition of the Count is fabulous. He’s a figure of power who is revealed as what he really is, an ordinary man with foibles up the wazoo. But in the end he has a heart.

Jeremy Kleeman is superb as Figaro and seems to enjoy throwing himself around. He has a talent for physical comedy as well as a wonderful baritone voice.

Sofia Troncoso is exquisite and endearing as Susanna and there are plenty of other treats including an appearance by one of Brisbane’s rising stars of opera, Xenia Puskarz-Thomas in the role of Cherubino. She sings like an angel and her theatricality was also on display on opening night in the Playhouse at QPAC on Thursday.

A slapstick moment between Susanna (Sofia Troncoso) and Figaro (Jeremy Kleeman). Photo Jade Ferguson

I loved the way the subtitles were projected onto the wall at a level that allowed you to follow it in English (the singing is in Italian) without craning your neck or losing track of the action.

The only quibble I had with the show was the set, which was wonderfully spare and aesthetically pleasing at times but later in the piece it became crowded and distracting. Perhaps that was meant to enhance the physical comedy but I compared notes with others who felt as I did. And the meaning of the mystifying headless statue was unclear to me. I will need to have that explained.

But I had a ball although I admit at times I closed my eyes, not because I didn’t want to look but just because I wanted the music to wash over and through me. Mozart, what a bloody genius.

This is a foundation work of opera and I urge you to get a program if you go and read up about it. Conductor Dane Lam has written a piece in the program that is most edifying.

The thing about this opera is that you don’t have to be an opera buff to get it. And it’s not dumbing it down to describe it as a rom-com, which it is. In fact it may be the best rom-com ever written. And it finishes with two weddings, no funeral and they all live happily ever after ... we think.

The Marriage of Figaro is on until July 31 in the Playhouse, QPAC ; oq.com.au or qpac.com.au