Word: mozarts
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...final productions this season are both hilarious comedies with plenty of attention to language and enough naturalism for anyone's taste. Epstein repeats his earlier feat in this Figaro, dusting off a far more acerbic play by Beaumarchais than the one we're accustomed to via Mozart. If the ART performers are less assured here than they were in Midsummer. Mark Leib's nimbly colloquial translation more than makes up the difference. With Grownups, a world premiere, there can be little argument about faith to the text: the author works at the director's side at least part...
...topical to appreciate two centuries later but leaving intact the many strands of Beaumarchais' plot. Figaro moves through its intrigues and mistaken identities in a vast double action to teach both the sluggish-witted Count Almaviva and his valet Figaro the uselessness of scheming the pointlessness of jealousy. When Mozart unleashed his inventive genius on the play, these were the themes he focused on, and his opera manipulates musical and dramatic structures towards that overwhelming moment of absolution when the Count begs his wife for forgiveness...
More than Mozart's the A.R.T.'s Figaro seems a document of the 1780s, a chronicle of crumbling deference, while remaining in many ways an autobiographical play. Leib has taken Figaro's lengthy monologue from the start of Beaumarchais' fifth act and distributed it as a series of prologues for each act. As Tony Shalhoub's Figaro recounts his life-history as a swashbuckler, gambler, poet, doctor, barber--an account filled with the sarcasm of a man hounded by a world he's sure is in the wrong--the audience recognizes the playwright behind his costume...
...precarious confidence of his social-climbing instinct--then hops down, nods furtively and scurries by the legs of the audience with some submissive mutters of "excuse me." The moment when the jealous Count gives Cherubino an army officer's commission to remove him from the scene--immortalized by Mozart in his mock-heroic, trumpet-and-drum aria "Non piu andrai..."--Epstein appropriates for a bit of grisly realism: Figaro grabs Cherubino by the shoulders and shakes him into an awareness of the horrors...
...that touched off the craze last year, must sign up for at least a 60-day wait at major audio outlets. In the Boston area, the waiting period can be up to 30 days, and some dealers require the full locally discounted price of $170 to reserve the mini-Mozart machine. Says Harvard Square's Tech Hi-Fi Sound Consultant Douglas Corley: "Our sales depend only on how fast they can build them." Some 30 other manufacturers have rushed more than 50 competing models onto the market, ranging from $60 to $300. Some units, like the KLH Solo...