Aggressively jaded: Edinburgh’s Marriage of Figaro reviewed 

‘Boo!’ came a voice from the stalls. ‘Boo. Outrage!’ It was hard not to feel a pang of admiration. British opera audiences don’t tend to boo; we’re either too polite or too unengaged. But there we were in Act Three of Kirill Serebrennikov’s production of The Marriage of Figaro – just after the scene where Susanna, the Count and the Countess enjoy a three-in-a-bed romp while singing the trio ‘Soave sia il vento’ – and at least one person felt passionate enough to raise his voice.

Obviously, there’s no such trio in The Marriage of Figaro. It had been prised from Cosi fan tutte and shoehorned into the antics chez Almaviva: one of several dream sequences inserted by Serebrennikov in pursuit of his hard-hitting thesis – articulated through a neon-lit slogan at the back of the set – that ‘Capitalism Kills Love’.