Review Roundup: Metropolitan Opera's LE NOZZE DI FIGARO

Despite the union battles and season lockout threats, the Metropolitan Opera opened its doors as scheduled on Monday night with Mozart's "Le Nozze di Figaro" conducted by James Levine.

Let's see what the critics had to say:

ANTHONY TOMMASINI of the NY Times: James Levine, making his first appearance on an opening night in four years, led an appealing cast and the great Met Orchestra in an eloquent, richly detailed performance of this multilayered Mozart masterpiece. The production, by the British director Richard Eyre, updates the story to Spain in the 1930s and has much to recommend it, though not Rob Howell's rotating set, which shows Count Almaviva's manor as a matrix of circular towers with bronze walls full of ornate Moorish designs.

David Salazar of the Latin Post: The final scene is spellbinding. The decision to cut Basilio and Marcellina's arias is much appreciated and allows the action to flow at full throttle. The climatic "O Contessa Perdona" is fantastic in the tension it builds. Coupled with conductor James Levine's slow tempo, the ensuing choral moment is not only sublime musically but also filled tremendous suspense. And when the eventual release comes in the form of the long-awaited (or long-desired) reconciliation, the viewer cannot help but feel a tremendous rush of joy.

Justin Davidson of the Vulture: Like no other composer in the genre's history, Mozart intertwines irony and sincerity, cynicism and romance, and all the elaborate calculations of lust. His characters are not singing puppets, but lovably imperfect humans. Eyre gets this, and so does his cast. Peter Mattei's Count Almaviva has no more self-control than the hormone-addled teenage boy Cherubino. Mattei has a powerful and pliant baritone, and the acting chops to cloak his own intelligence in the character's constant befuddlement. Isabel Leonard is a marvelous Cherubino, squirming and lusting and leering and ducking as if she had been reborn as a teenage boy, but with the voice of a confident woman. Majeski sings the Countess with a slightly acid timbre and a tender manner. She is the only adult in a household full of children, casting an amber glow of melancholy on all the uproarious games. Eyre has wrangled all these singers into a performance that feels at once spectacular and intimate. When Majeski sings her tour de force of wistfulness, 3,800 people can feel as if the Countess were unburdening herself only to them.

David Patrick Stearns of Operavore: Singers were all excellent, some nearly redefining their roles, and Eyre's staging clarified the complicated upstairs/downstairs plot with updating to 1930s England (not quite "Downton Abbey"). If James Levine's conducting didn't have the vital pulse of his recent Cosi fan tutte, he projected his customary authority, aside from an early bit of loose coordination between singers and orchestra. One catch (and let's just get this over with): Rob Howell's revolving set design, constructed on short notice when this team was hired about a year ago, wasn't just puzzling, but looked like hell.

JOE DZIEMIANOWICZ of the Daily News: The set is beautiful, if somewhat heavy for this light, frisky frolic. But the spinning suggests churning machinations inside the mind of the Count, whose title gives him the right to any woman he wants. He's got a thing for servants. The show begins with a topless maid scurrying from his bedroom. But the woman he wants is Figaro's bride-to-be.... Ildar Abdrazakov is an appealing and huggable Figaro, whose happy dance en route to the altar is a sweet flourish. Peter Mattei brings flashes of nasty as the Count.

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