“I certainly don’t want the production to hide behind the 18th century. You
have to climb forward and deal with your own time. Theatre must always make
things present to the viewer, but at the same time it must acknowledge where
it has come from.”

Fiona Shaw on _The Marriage of Figaro_ as quoted in [The
Independent](http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/theatre-
dance/features/figaro-a-marriage-made-in-heaven-2365484.html)

This production of _The Marriage of Figaro_ was first seen in 2011 and has
been revived twice at ENO. Director Fiona Shaw wanted to present a staging of
the work that speaks to contemporary audiences.

Below is an extract from a conversation with Director Fiona Shaw and
journalist Edward Seckerson:

**FS:** My job is to try and get the singers to be true to our generation as
we watch _Figaro_. The relationships should be recognisable. I thought about
placing the opera __ in a modern context. This was my instinct because Da
Ponte and Mozart were trying to strike a modern discord in their moment. But
you cannot be modern with an opera that is fundamentally based on the right of
the lord to sleep with his servant– the _droit de seigneur_. This stopped
after the French Revolution. So one has to make an onstage context: men and
women have to be trapped in houses run by men who have this right. To show
this, we chose to make the setting both a house and a maze, and in the middle
of the maze lives the Minotaur, who is the Count. Whenever the maze turns you
see the back corridors, which the servants inhabit. There is a parallel
universe going on all the time. We also have staircases either side that lead
nowhere. I’ve always felt that the brain looks like a maze: our minds are both
unlimited and yet always knocking against the passages of our own limitations.

**ES****:** How much does the addition of music change the dynamic of how you
work as a director and how people perform as actors and singers?

**FS** : As a play, I would have been daunted by it because of the speed at
which the action goes by. In a play, the action is usually heading towards a
comic or tragic ending. But this opera seems full of little endings in itself
– it’s a Rubik’s cube. The recitatives are full of action. I have also
introduced action into the arias, treating them like recitatives. An aria
occurs when the emotion is high enough that it could not be spoken. Sometimes
in the opera you think people shouldn’t be singing and they still are; they’re
talking about whether you should go in the door or out the door. It’s always
because there is an anxiety in the music. It’s not a day of splendour but a
day of anxiety, on which a lot of comedies and tragedies are built.

[ View 8 images ](https://ekat8wd2es5.exactdn.com/wp-
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Jack-1024×657.jpg?strip=all&lossy=1&quality=90&webp=90&w=2560&ssl=1)

Photo Gallery

### **The Set**

Fiona Shaw worked with designer Peter McKintosh to conceive a claustrophobic
design for the house. They wanted to portray an environment where characters
are trapped by the hereditary rights of the Count. The set contains white
partitions outlining the walls and corridors and is built into a revolving
stage. This allows the audience to see scenes happening simultaneously in
different rooms. The effect produces a maze of walls, staircases and
corridors, running up and down between the different section of the house. As
the set begins to move, the viewer is never quite sure what is going to be
revealed next. This unusual design also reflects Beaumarchais’s contrast
between the behaviour allowed ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’. The clean, modern
design contrasts with the use of eighteen-century period costumes. This
suggests the arrival of a new, more equal world as the century is swept up
into revolution.

The London Coliseum was home to the very first revolving stage in a British
theatre. The original 1904 revolve was powered by electricity on the same grid
as the trams on St. Martin’s Lane. When the trams stopped, so did the revolve.
This mechanism is now obsolete and is buried into the ceiling of the
building’s canteen. A new revolve was built for Fiona Shaw’s 2011 Figaro
production. The combined weight of the wall panels and stair partitions is
4172.5 kg.. over 4 tonnes.

ENO is a repertory house, with three opera productions presented in rotation
at any one time. Between performances the entire set is dismantled and stored
in the wings while another production set is brought on stage.