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4Although the role Dr. Bartolo — a Malvolio-style fool — is much smaller, bass-baritone Peter McGillivray gave larger-than-life performance. Clownishly bespectacled, McGillivray...displayed a canny knack for physicality, at one point angrily giving Figaro’s hairbrush a savage scissoring before stabbing it.
In unusual but superbly successful casting, Cherubino, the love-lost page-boy, is sung by a male counter-tenor, not a female contralto. Every inch the hormone-infested youth, Ray Chenez sings with passion, as well as vocal agility.
The page Cherubino — a trouser role for a mezzo-soprano — is played by a man, countertenor Ray Chenez. This decision pays off handsomely because Chenez easily passes for a teenager. Performed by a man, everything about Cherubino registers more effectively; his cross-dressing is funnier, for instance, and he can really kiss Barbarina without making the audience squirm. (He can take off his shirt, too. When was the last time you saw a mezzo do that?) What Chenez does in a mezzo’s register is technically amazing and often affecting, and his Cherubino is at once hilarious and sympathetic (Thursday’s audience plainly adored him).
