Mozart & Da Ponte admirably reinvented for a small stage: Wild Arts intimate & vividly engaging account of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro at Layer Marney Tower

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro – Timothy Nelson, Ellie Neate, Elinor Rolf Johnson – Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro; Elinor Rolfe Johnson, Timothy Nelson, Ellie Neate, Jack Sandison, Abbie Ward, director: Danielle de Niese, conductor: Orlando Jopling, Wild Arts; Layer Marney Tower
Reviewed 7 June 2026

Danielle de Niese makes her directorial debut, encouraging a fine cast to give us a vivid yet magical evening in the theatre they drew us into the story, both gripping and entertaining

When I interviewed Orlando Jopling, artistic director of Wild Arts, in the middle of the company’s rehearsals for their new production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro he said that his ‘aim is that people will forget that the cast is singing and that this will draw the audience into the story’. [see my interview] Having a well-known singer make her directorial debut at the same time is perhaps not the most obvious way to achieve these ends. Danielle de Niese made her debut at the Met in New York as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro at the age of 19 and went on to sing Susanna there. But judging by her new production of the opera for Wild Arts she has successfully adapted to a new way of working.

Danielle de Niese’s production of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro debuted this week at the barn at Layer Marney Tower (we caught the final performance there on Sunday 7 June 2026). Orlando Jopling conducted an instrumental ensemble of ten, with Timothy Nelson and Elinor Rolfe Johnson as Count and Countess Almaviva, Jack Sandison and Ellie Neate as Figaro and Susanna, and Abbie Ward as Cherubino. Designs were by Laura Jane Stanfield. The work was sung in a new translation by Danielle de Niese and Orlando Jopling.

The production is compact: it has to be, Wild Arts tour to 20 wildly different venues. Frankly, the entire opera barn at Layer Marney would probably fit on the Met stage, but this has the advantage of immediacy. The audience is very close and farces always benefit from a sense of physical impossibility. De Niese’s staging was vividly immediate and highly active, responding to the farce elements of the story with action that was highly physical and nearly constant.

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro – Timothy Nelson, Jack Sandison, Abbie Ward – Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)

The setting was 18th century, with frock coats and panniered dresses and an element of formality in relations. We never lost sight of the fact that Figaro and Susanna are servants, not matter how privileged they are. Yet there was a vein of modernity in the reactions which made the production immediate, these were real people before us. De Niese’s solutions to the challenges of the staging were imaginative and not always naturalistic; this is a farce after all. Yet she never lost sight of the characters on stage, these were real people with real emotions. When needed, things came to a halt, focusing on a single character.

There was little in the way of set, just screens, chairs and boxes. These latter held props which the cast explored during the overture. Amongst these were letters which clearly reminded both the Count and the Countess of happier times. Then during the Countess’ aria in Act Two, she seemed to be remembering these past times including the Count appearing and making love to here. Discreetly done, yet it helped set the background to the Count and Countess’s relationship and meant that the reconciliation scene at the end was both moving and believable.

Casting was age appropriate which meant that Jack Sandison and Ellie Neate played Figaro and Susanna with the resilience of youth. Sandison’s wonderfully resonant dark voice brought a serious element to his characterisation yet throughout this Figaro was robust, lively and engaging. Yes, there were flashes of anger, but always with Sandison’s sense of engaging liveliness. He has a very expressive, mobile face which was put to great use given the proximity of the audience. He and Neate easily drew us into the characters’ dilemmas and challenges, we were rooting for them. Neate brought a lovely openness and charm to the role. This Susanna was intelligent and lively, but was less the minx and more quicksilver, flashing through the action.

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro – Olivia Ray – Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)

As the Count and Countess, Timothy Nelson and Elinor Rolfe Johnson were somewhat older and more world-weary yet not so much that we could not believe that there had once been the torrid seduction depicted in The Barber of Seville. Nelson’s Count had a remarkable vein of violence in him, temper often kept in check with difficulty. Yet for all his fierce intensity, Nelson made sure that the character remained reined in within civilised bounds. Nelson managed to make the man both frightening and vulnerable, his anger intense and focused yet admirably lacking in sheer bluster. The opening of Act Three was neatly done with Count and Countess stiffly at opposite ends of the breakfast table, the interlocking dialogues done as asides.

This was one of those moments when de Niese’s staging showed its confidence, in the way she had characters breaking the fourth wall to address the audience directly. Throughout the evening we were aware that we were the audience. Olivia Ray’s delightful Marcellina even had moments of remembering to act for the audience! This also had a sense of drawing us into the characters’ world.

Elinor Rolfe Johnson gave us a beautifully sung Countess, both the arias finely phrased yet also redolent of all the hurt and complicated past. Throughout, she and Nelson made the couple’s relationship believably complex rather than reductive. There was, perhaps, a depressive element to the Countess’s opening aria with its memories of the past. But Rolfe Johnson made it clear the way the Countess was enlivened and emboldened by her servants lively activities. The flirtation with Abbie Neate’s Cherubino in Act Two went to the brink, but only just and the whole of that act wonderfully veered between intense feeling and sheer farce, with everyone playing the action with great joie de vivre.

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro – Jack Sandison – Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)

Abbie Ward made a charming and believable Cherubino. Definitely self-absorbed and reacting to anything in a skirt. It helped that Ward sang the two arias so finely, giving the character a degree of musical sophistication which helped mitigate his annoying qualities.

The staging used Mozart’s original doubling so that Timothy Dawkins played Bartolo and Antonio, whilst William Searle played Don Basilio and Don Curzio. In the case of Dawkins this meant some remarkably quick changes, but Dawkins did this with virtuoso elan, creating two very different and very memorable characters. Searle made both of his characters wonderfully oily with Don Basilio being a cleric rather than the usual camp music master. Olivia Ray brought a mellow charm and great relish to Marcellina along with a warmth which made the turn around in Act Three more believable. The cast was completed with Eleanor O’Driscoll’s finely sung yet sparky Barbarina, with O’Driscoll and Ward singing the solo chorus lines in the wedding scene at the end of Act Three.

This was not one of those small-scale productions that make the opera work by doing violence to the original dramaturgy. Here we got Mozart and Da Ponte, admirably reinvented for a small stage and intimate setting, but still treating their opera with intelligence and respect. It is perhaps worth remembering that the original company that premiered the piece specialised in performing Italian comic operas. They would have been at home in the vivid farce. Yet this production added a lovely level of humanity to the piece, helped by a strong ensemble cast.

In the pit, Orlando Jopling (who played the sympathetic recitatives) brought out the full range of Mozart’s score. Yes, we had fewer instruments, but the players all worked hard and made us believe this version of Mozart’s music.

Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro – Jack Sandison, Olivia Ray, Timothy Dawkins – Wild Arts (Photo: Lucy Toms)

The result was vivid yet magical evening in the theatre as cast and instrumentalists drew us into the story, both gripping and entertaining.