Le nozze di Figaro - Schedule, Program & Tickets

Text by Lorenzo Da Ponte after Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
Comedia per musica in four acts

Cast

Musical direction
Adam Fischer

Staging
Barrie Kosky

Stage
Rufus Didwiszus

Costumes
Victoria Behr

Light
Frank Evin

Stage design assistant
Jan Freese

Count Almaviva
Michael Nagy

Countess Almaviva
Golda Schultz

Susanna
Katharina Konradi

Figaro
Peter Kellner

Cherubino
Patricia Nolz

Synopsis: It was supposed to be the best day for Susanna and Figaro: their wedding day. But Count Almaviva is after the bride, Don Basilio bothers Susanna with his intercession for the Count, Marcellina wants to sue for the old marriage contract with Figaro and Doctor Bartolo supports her, also out of old anger against Figaro. And then there is the page Cherubino, who is in love with all women and whom all women want to be around, preferably disguised as a girl... Only with the combined forces of Figaro's imagination, Susanna's cleverness and the support of the betrayed Countess can it succeed to bring this "great day" to a happy end.

Music: In Lorenzo Da Ponte, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had finally found the long-sought poet who »understands the theatre«. The pleasure in Da Ponte's wonderful theatrical poetry has gone into every note of Mozart's music, magnificently composed ensembles such as the sextet in the third act almost challenge the joy of playing of the singer-actresses. But the arias that Mozart wrote for the character of the Countess Almaviva, for example, are not only incomparable pieces of music, but also quiet moments cleverly conceived in terms of music drama, in which the action does not simply stand still, but rather seems to breathe calmly.

Director: In director Barrie Kosky's fast-paced production, Susanna and Figaro have to fight their way from the narrow space allotted to them by the Count through the magnificent rooms of the Almaviva Palace before the outside space finally opens up as a perspective in the fourth act. Barrie Kosky: »We know from Shakespeare that a garden or a forest – especially in the evening – is a democratic space. Anything is possible there.«


BACKGROUND INFORMATION

It was certainly a risk that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte took when they first worked together, but in any case it was a completely unusual approach in Vienna in the late 18th century: starting a new opera project without having been commissioned beforehand , with no guaranteed prospect of a performance or even payment. In the case of Mozart, the situation was made more difficult by the fact that he had an excellent reputation as an instrumental composer in the relevant places - not least at the imperial court - but was considered to have little experience in the field of the theatre. On top of that, the template chosen by the composer, Beaumarchais' comedy Le Mariage de Figaro, also called into question the realization of the planned opera on a public stage - after all, Joseph II had shortly before forbidden the performance of the play, which was charged with revolutionary explosive material, on the grounds that » the piece contained a lot of offensiveness. With a lot of diplomatic skill and pointing out that he had not created a pure translation of the French original, but a new version of the material that had been cleaned of all questionable content, Da Ponte managed to allay the emperor's concerns, even to convince him of the project and finally to do so to personally order the premiere of Le nozze di Figaro on May 1, 1786 in the Hofburgtheater.

Subject to change.