The Marriage of Figaro/OperaUpClose, King's Head - opera review

Last week, OperaUpClose, which put pub opera on the London map, announced that it will soon leave the King’s Head, its home for the past four years. It leaves behind powerful memories of opera staged with minimum resources but maximum impact; with luck it will offer more of the same wherever it goes in future.

For now, it still has work to do in Islington, beginning with Sarah Tipple’s half-period, half-modern production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. The opera’s intimacy often goes missing in the wide-open spaces of an opera house stage. Not here, where every bit of eye contact and every gesture means something.

Alex Beetschen’s miniaturised orchestra uses only piano, clarinet and viola, all instruments that Mozart favoured, and despite occasional moments of excess clatter it allows the words to register with unusual force. While Robin Norton-Hale’s translation takes a few liberties, it gets to the heart of the matter: for once the laughter doesn’t rely on surtitles. The opera’s long run necessitates alternating casts; last night’s was young and fresh-faced, the voices occasionally stretched but always ardent. Mozart, it turns out, is quite at home down the pub.

Until November 8 (020 7478 0160, kingsheadtheatre.com)