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https://www.otsuka.co.jp/en/company/globalnews/2014/0214_02.html
The Otsuka Museum of Art hosted the fifth Sistine Kabuki production – The Marriage of Figaro – for 3 days, on February 14, 15, and 16. Tickets sold out almost as soon as they went on sale. Two performances were held each day in Tokushima, Japan and were attended by about 2600 visitors.
From its inception, "Sistine Kabuki" productions have been based on the themes of Japanese-Western collaboration and the creation of innovative kabuki theater.
The current production – the Marriage of Figaro – is the first Sistine Kabuki comedy, and was based on Mozart's opera of the same name. Kazuo Mizuguchi produced and directed, and Kanjuro Fujima handled the choreography. Amidst the strains of Western and Japanese traditional music performed by the Tokushima Indoor String Quartet, two large stages, one in front and one in the rear of the audience, connected by an elevated "flower way" walkway, as well as a small stage placed almost in the middle of the "flower way," used the majesty of the 40-meter Sistine Hall to great effect.
The Marriage of Figaro was set in Spain, but for this production the setting was moved to the country of Awa (present-day Tokushima), and the story was modified somewhat. Starting with the third performance, Ainosuke Kataoka played the roles corresponding to both Figaro and the Ronin who appears in this production. Kazutaro Nakamura played the role of Susanna, Kichiya Kamimura played the role of Countess Rosina Almaviva, Shouzou Uesugi played the role of Count Almaviva, and Miya Setouchi, a former star of the Takarazuka Review musical theater troupe and a native of Tokushima, played the role of Marcellina.
The love story of Figaro, the head of Count Almaviva's servant-staff, and his bride-to-be Susanna is complicated by Countess Rosina's desire for revenge against her husband the count, who is attempting to seduce Susanna, by the efforts of Marcellina to use trickery to compel Figaro to marry her, and by the efforts of the Ronin to re-establish his house and title. The tanuki "racoon dog" legends of the land of Awa and the machinations of the various characters came to life in the Otsuka Museum of Art's Sistine Hall.
The Sistine Kabuki productions have attracted considerable media attention for the use of flamenco in the third production (GOEMON) and modern music and Western dance in the previous production (Shiro Amakusa). This production continued this trend, incorporating samba rhythms, and including songs sung by the performers, which is extremely rare in kabuki, and has thus led to this production attracting attention as a "Kabuki musical."