Here is an innovative approach to Mozart/Da Ponte's popular masterpiece, combining authentically notated vocal lines with a piano reduction and offering translated excerpts from the original Beaumarchais play, in the form of substitute English dialogue, as an optional choice for recitatives and set pieces. Far fewer notes than are generally found in other English translations have been added to recitatives, thereby more closely reflecting Mozart's style and intentions. The opera may be performed in Italian or English in a traditional production or it may be tailored to the capabilities of students or more professional casts to reflect the unique vision of producers or directors. The use of dialogue has several benefits: The length of performance time may be shortened to adhere to artistic or budgetary constraints; the dialogue places a greater emphasis on the revolutionary aspects of the original play; spoken lines highlight the comic elements of the plot and characters; audience members have commented that they learned more of the backstory of the complicated events through the dialogue exchanges; the plot is more accessible to audiences through the spoken lines, which may be more easily understood than sung recitatives. The subtitle of "Flexible Figaro" is based on the endless possibilities of style and concept that the edition offers to every interpreter, according to the personal vision of the director and the pragmatic considerations of a particular production. Eight groups, including high school, university, and community college workshops, a theater ensemble, and a professional opera company, have performed this FIGARO in the US and Great Britain, in widely divergent styles, ranging from traditional, to ulra-modern concepts. All have proven to be very successful and well received by the public. A ninth production is in preparation in England, and scheduled to be performed in December, 2016.
Author Biography:
Mozart wrote Le nozze di Figaro to a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1786, based on a play by Caron de Beaumarchais. For further information about this great composer's life, consult an online biography. Walter Sherwood Dudley received the B.M. degree in music and the B.A. in French at the University of North Texas. After a year of studying French literature in Paris on a Fulbright scholarship, he began graduate study in musicology at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1962, and earned the Ph.D. in 1968. He was appointed assistant professor at UC Santa Cruz in 1968, where he remained until 2002, retiring as a full professor. Dudley was a major factor in instituting the B.A. degree in music at UCSC in 1969 and a vigorous advocate for the establishment of the B.M. degree in performance in the 1980s. Throughout his career Dudley has specialized in the history of orchestration and in creating modern editions of historical works to reflect both the contemporaneous performance practice and modern concepts of the works. Sherwood Dudley's interest in opera performed in France during the late eighteenth century has led him to focus his recent work on editing and conducting operas, notably Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro and Francois Devienne's Les Visitandines (Sisters of the Visitation). In collaboration with colleague Miriam Ellis, Dudley has created an English version of the Mozart opera, following the lead of its first Parisian production in 1793, which replaced Mozart's recitatives with portions of spoken dialogue from Beaumarchais's play. This edition is now being produced throughout the U.S. The performance edition of Les Visitandines contains the music for the expanded three-act version of the opera, which Dudley discovered in Lille, France, in 1985. He conducted the premiere of this edition at UC Santa Cruz in May, 1997. Dudley is the former editor of the scholarly articles for The Opera Journal. Miriam Ellis, Ph.D, is Lecturer Emerita (currently called back to service), at UC Santa Cruz, where she taught French language and theater for over 30 years, was stage director for the UCSC Opera Workshop, and founded the Miriam Ellis International Playhouse (MEIP). Now in its 17th season, MEIP is the only multilingual program in academia which produces annual fully-staged theater performances in several languages (with English super-titles) on the same bill. Dr. Ellis has translated seven complete opera librettos for performance, most of which have been performed in English, as well as many arias for the texts of concert and recital programs that she produced for the Young Artists Series of the Santa Cruz Opera Society, Inc. (SCOSI). Together with Dr. Sherwood Dudley, she founded this group in 1976, and it has just celebrated its 40th anniversary. Dr. Ellis frequently contributes her opera translations to on-line sites, such as the Aria Database, and is on the editorial board of ResMusica, a daily online international journal devoted to classical music and dance, for which she has translated concert and opera reviews, interviews, and various other texts. Over the course of her career at UCSC, Dr. Ellis served as guide and interpreter for Eugene Ionesco, famed French playright of the Absurd, during his month-long campus residency in May, 1979. She also served as translator and interpreter for Mme Danielle Mitterand, wife of then French President Francois Mitterand, who visited campus in 1989 and presented a public lecture for a large audience. In 2000, Dr. Ellis was awarded the medal and title of Chevalier des Palmes Academiques by the French government. Since 2002, Dr. Ellis has taught courses devoted to musical theater, opera history, Romanticism, and other literary and artistic movements, for the Lifelong Learners affiliated with UCSC (now the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at UCSC).
