Radio New Zealand Concert network
Sunday 24th of April 2016 at 6;04 - 9.35 pm
Sunday 18th of November 2015 at 6.03 - 9.45 pm
Sunday 6th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 6.05 pm
Sunday 24th of April 2016 at 6;04 - 9.35 pm
Sunday 18th of November 2015 at 6.03 - 9.45 pm
Sunday 6th of November 2011 at 3.03 - 6.05 pm
MOZART: The Marriage of Figaro, an opera in four acts
2016
Figaro........................... Mikhail Petrenko
Susanna........................ Anita Hartig
Count........................... Luca Pisaroni
Countess...................... Amanda Majeski
Cherubino.................... Isabel Leonard
Dr Bartolo.................... Maurizio Muraro
Marcellina.................... Susanne Mentzer
Don Basilio.................. Robert McPherson
Antonio........................ Paul Corona
Barbarina..................... Ashley Emerson
Don Curzio.................. Scott Scully
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Fabio Luisi (2015
Almaviva..................... Mariusz Kwiecien
Rosina.......................... Rachel Willis-Sorensen
Susanna....................... Danielle de Niese
Figaro.......................... Erwin Schrott
Cherubino.................... Serena Malfi
Marcellina................... Susanne Mentzer
Bartolo......................... John Del Carlo
Basilio......................... Greg Fedderly
Don Curzio.................. Scott Scully
Barbarina..................... Ashley Emerson
Antonio........................ Philip Cokorinos
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Edo de Waart
2011
Count Almaviva............. Simon Keenlyside
Countess....................... Véronique Gens
Susanna........................ Patrizia Ciofi
Figaro........................... Lorenzo Regazzo
Cherubino..................... Angelika Kirchschlager
Marcellina..................... Marie McLaughlin
Basilio........................... Kobie van Rensburg
Bartolo.......................... Antonio Abete
Barbarina...................... Nuria Rial
Girls.............................. Elisabeth Rapp, Yeree Suh
Collegium Vocale Gent, Concerto Cologne/ René Jacobs
(Harmonia Mundi HMC 80 1818.20)
COMPOSER
OVERVIEW
LIBRETTO (Italian)
SCORE
Mozart, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (Le Nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata)
Note at the outset that all the action takes place in a single day, according to the classical conventions. The subtitle says so: "the day of madness". The same applies to The Barber of Seville.
We are in the 18th century, in Spain, near Seville, in a palatial mansion, initially in a backroom, next to the bedroom of the Count Almaviva and his Countess (her name is Rosina, as we learned from the Barber of Seville, but it is never mentioned, right? Wrong. But what is the Count's personal name?). Their servants, Susanna and Figaro (the erstwhile barber), are preparing for their wedding (already announced in the title of the opera).
Overture: busy, bustling, beautiful, and brief; it takes the time needed for boiling an egg (I’m not making this up; Beecham did; and it includes space for regular taking of your Beecham pills, to keep you regular).
Act 1
[1.1] Duet: 5, 10, 20, 30. Figaro is measuring the floor for positioning the marital bed; Susanna is trying on her home-made bonnet, looking into a mirror, if the director allows.
[1.2] They differ over the suitability of this room: he says they will be able to respond immediately when their master and mistress ring the bell (Ding ding!); she says the lord can come in when he likes, and (being another Don Juan) he can exercise his lordly rights in their bed for idle half-hours; and that’s why he gave her a large dowry.
[1.3] Cavatina. Susanna is called away (by that bell); Figaro muses over this scenario; if the Count wants to have a ball, he will be dancing to Figaro’s tune; all your machinations I will overturn.
[1.4] Change of scenery? Bartolo and Marcellina (formerly his servant) are plotting to subvert the marriage; she has a contract, and Figaro will be sued for breach of promise; pay up or marry her.
Aria : La vendetta. Bartolo will be glad to get revenge on Figaro, who had conspired to take his ward Rosina from him, and give her to Count Almaviva.
[1.5] Marcellina and Susanna meet. Who defers at the door? Age before beauty, et cetera.
[1.6] Susanna remains. Young Cherubino appears, disconsolate and desolate; the Count found him alone with Barbarina (the gardener’s daughter) and has dismissed him. The randy teenager loves all the women on the estate; and he would like Susanna’s job, dressing and undressing the Countess. He sings his song about his state of mind; crazy with love and longing; he’s a mixed-up kid: I don’t know what I am or what I am doing.
[1.7] Recitative (heaps of it, but plenty of action, too). The Count is coming, and Cherubino hides behind a chair; the Count sits in it; he mentions his appointment as ambassador to Britain, and he will take Figaro and her with him to London; and tonight he would like to meet her in the garden at dusk. Basilio (music teacher and purveyor of gossip) is heard approaching; the Count goes behind the chair, while Cherubino secretly takes his place in it, and Suzy covers him with a dress. Basilio is actually reporting the Count’s admiration for Susan, and the boy’s infatuation for the Countess. The Count reveals himself, and they sing as a trio; Cherubino is silent, but he is discovered and speaks; the Count wishes to summon Figaro to see his bride with the pageboy.
[1.8] Chorus. Figaro arrives with a company of peasants, to honour their lord for abolishing his right to the first night; he has done that publicly but he wants to continue his pursuit of sweet Sue privately; so he prevaricates. He sends Cherubino off to join his regiment as an officer, forthwith.
[9] Aria. Figaro bids him fare well with a parting greeting that contrasts his life as an amorous butterfly with the soldier’s hardships; no more fandango-dancing, now it is marching through mud (fango): Cherubino, on to victory, to military glory! All depart to the sound of a martial march.
Cherubino in love. The end of Act 1 together with the whole of Act 2 covers all the Cherubino scenes, with his two songs about love (or teenager lust), and his two attempts to conceal himself from the wrath of the Count; he pops up again in the finale. He goes on to have an entire French comic opera devoted to him, namely Chérubin, by Jules Massenet: at seventeen he is pursuing a famous dancer, but he has a lover named Nina (Barbarina is not in sight), and he is still treasuring the Countess’s ribbon in his pocket; Nina wins in the end. Frederica von Stade continues to play the pageboy in a recording of this (so his voice has still not broken!). Incidentally, Roger Wilson has revealed in a record review that there is an intact male soprano around, who plays Cherubino. This eases the complication in Act 2, dressing ‘him’ in feminine clothing when he is in actuality a woman pretending to be a boy.
In Act 1 (6-9). Cherubino has been discovered alone with Barbarina, and the Count is sending him away to be an officer in his regiment. Figaro marches him off to military glory (but he does not go).
Act 2
[2.1] Porgi amor (cavatina). The Countess is alone, imploring Love to grant her relief from her sorrow and her sighing, by giving her beloved back to her, or else let her die.
[2.2] She and Susanna discuss the Count’s infidelity. Figaro comes along la-la-laring, as he did when he was the barber of Seville. He has a plan to defeat his employer in his quest for Susanna’s favour. This point always eludes me in the opera house, so I will write it down here: because Susanna has refused the Count’s offer to be confidential attachée to the embassy in London, when he is made ambassador, he will transfer the honour to Marcellina; so, Figaro has sent Basilio to him, with a letter disclosing a proposed assignation of the Countess with a lover at the ball that evening; in his confusion he will not be able to prevent Figaro’s wedding (see the title of the opera). Susanna points out that Marcellina will still oppose their marriage. Figaro says they can disguise Cherubino as Susanna, send the Count to meet ‘her’, and surprise him; and then Figaro will make the Count dance to his tune (as promised in Act 1).
[2.3] Voi che sapete (canzona). Cherubino arrives to be dressed; he is sighing and blushing, and he sings his song ‘Tell me ladies, you who know what love is, whether it is what I have in my heart’. He describes his symptoms: shivers and hot flushes (or similar). Susanna sings an aria as they dress him. They discover the Countess’s ribbon tied around his lily-white arm.
[2.4] The Count is supposedly off hunting for a few hours, but here he is, banging at the locked door, wanting to know what is going on in there. The boy hides in the closet, or dressing room.
[2.5] The Count enters suspiciously; there is a crash from the toilet-room; he is told, eventually, that it is Susanna. The Count has Figaro’s letter with him; he is seeking an explanation.
[2.6] Trio. Susanna enters, unnoticed, while the Count is calling on her to come out of the other room (he is told that she is trying on her wedding dress, and can not); she sizes up the situation, hides in an alcove, and practices voice-throwing; she suggests this could cause a scandal in the house. Indeed, so the Count locks the other doors, and takes his wife with him to get a tool to break into the little room.
[2.7] Cherubino now comes out, and takes his only way of escape by jumping through the second-storey window into the garden.
[2.8] The master and mistress return with the wherewithal to force the door. Slowly she confesses it is a child hiding in the room, after they had been having a harmless diversion, and it is in fact Cherubino. Consternation, the pesky page is everywhere.
[2.9] Susanna appears from the room, to the astonishment of both; he begs her pardon.
[2.10] Enter Figaro, to be questioned about the letter (the women have already said that he sent it); he denies any knowledge of it.
[2.11] Antonio the gardener bursts in, to report a person jumping on his garden and damaging his plants. Figaro takes the blame; but the paper that was dropped was Cherubino’s commission; yes, it still needed to be sealed.
[2.12] Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio arrive, demanding justice for the lady; confusion reigns, in a septet.
Act 3
[3.1] The Count recounts (to himself) an account of the details of the muddle (while playing with a machine in this production):
(1) an anonymous letter (about an assignation with Susanna; we know that Figaro concocted it; another letter will replace it soon);
(2) the maid locked in the dressing room (actually Cherubino);
(3) the Countess flustering (she did not know Susanna had taken Cherubino’s place);
(4) a man leaping onto the garden; (5) another (Figaro) claiming he was the one;
(6) the Countess could not be guilty, as she has too much respect for his honour, which is, however, fraught with human frailty.
[3.2] Susanna comes (feigning to search for her Lady’s smelling salts) and tells the Count she will submit to his desire in exchange for a dowry; he calls her Carissima (Dearest).
[3.3] Figaro interrupts, and she takes him off telling him that he has won his case without needing a lawyer.
[3.4] The Count hears this, and muses angrily over exacting revenge on his serf; why should this nobody have and enjoy the object of my passion, Susanna?
[3.5] The lawyer Curzio leads Figaro with Marcellina and Bartolo into the presence of the Count. It is decided: Figaro must pay back the two thousand pieces of silver that Marcellina lent him, or marry her (she confesses she does love him). Figaro claims he is of noble birth, and would need his parents’ consent; he was stolen by bandits in infancy; he has a spatula birthmark, which proves that he is Raffaelo, the child of Marcellina herself, and also of Bartolo. At this moment Susanna arrives with the money to redeem her fiancé, and she is astonished to see him embracing Marcellina lovingly; she slaps his face; but Marcellina offers her embrace to her, as his mother (sua madre? sua madre!).
[3.6] Gazing on the fruit of their early love, the old couple decide to make it a double wedding. Susanna gives Figaro the money, and Bartolo makes a contribution, too. Everyone is blissfully happy, except the Count.
[3.7] Barbarina tells the page Cherubino that they are going to dress him in women’s clothing, so that the Count will not be able to find him.
NB the scenes are not always in this order; Dove sono? appeared before 3.5, and also 3.7.
Act 4 On the night of the wedding celebrations the Countess and her maid Susanna exchange clothes, creating a farcical scene in the garden:Figaro seeks consolation in his mother's embrace the Count is unwittingly making love to his own wife. All ends happily, when all is revealed and the Count begs Rosina for forgiveness.
A BBC poll determined that the three most loved opera arias are not by Verdi or Puccini or Rossini, but by Purcell, Mozart, and Wagner. Can you guess what they are? They are all sad songs, two of them being closely connected with death, the other one is concerned with the loss of the joy of young love. The second place-winner: Dove sono i bei momenti, Where are the lovely moments of sweetness and pleasure? This is sung by the Countess, in Act 3 of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
Obsolete:
REVIEW
CHARACTERS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO
2016
Figaro........................... Mikhail Petrenko
Susanna........................ Anita Hartig
Count........................... Luca Pisaroni
Countess...................... Amanda Majeski
Cherubino.................... Isabel Leonard
Dr Bartolo.................... Maurizio Muraro
Marcellina.................... Susanne Mentzer
Don Basilio.................. Robert McPherson
Antonio........................ Paul Corona
Barbarina..................... Ashley Emerson
Don Curzio.................. Scott Scully
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Fabio Luisi (2015
Almaviva..................... Mariusz Kwiecien
Rosina.......................... Rachel Willis-Sorensen
Susanna....................... Danielle de Niese
Figaro.......................... Erwin Schrott
Cherubino.................... Serena Malfi
Marcellina................... Susanne Mentzer
Bartolo......................... John Del Carlo
Basilio......................... Greg Fedderly
Don Curzio.................. Scott Scully
Barbarina..................... Ashley Emerson
Antonio........................ Philip Cokorinos
Metropolitan Opera Chorus & Orch/Edo de Waart
2011
Count Almaviva............. Simon Keenlyside
Countess....................... Véronique Gens
Susanna........................ Patrizia Ciofi
Figaro........................... Lorenzo Regazzo
Cherubino..................... Angelika Kirchschlager
Marcellina..................... Marie McLaughlin
Basilio........................... Kobie van Rensburg
Bartolo.......................... Antonio Abete
Barbarina...................... Nuria Rial
Girls.............................. Elisabeth Rapp, Yeree Suh
Collegium Vocale Gent, Concerto Cologne/ René Jacobs
(Harmonia Mundi HMC 80 1818.20)
COMPOSER
OVERVIEW
LIBRETTO (Italian)
SCORE
Mozart, THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO (Le Nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata)
Note at the outset that all the action takes place in a single day, according to the classical conventions. The subtitle says so: "the day of madness". The same applies to The Barber of Seville.
We are in the 18th century, in Spain, near Seville, in a palatial mansion, initially in a backroom, next to the bedroom of the Count Almaviva and his Countess (her name is Rosina, as we learned from the Barber of Seville, but it is never mentioned, right? Wrong. But what is the Count's personal name?). Their servants, Susanna and Figaro (the erstwhile barber), are preparing for their wedding (already announced in the title of the opera).
Overture: busy, bustling, beautiful, and brief; it takes the time needed for boiling an egg (I’m not making this up; Beecham did; and it includes space for regular taking of your Beecham pills, to keep you regular).
Act 1
[1.1] Duet: 5, 10, 20, 30. Figaro is measuring the floor for positioning the marital bed; Susanna is trying on her home-made bonnet, looking into a mirror, if the director allows.
[1.2] They differ over the suitability of this room: he says they will be able to respond immediately when their master and mistress ring the bell (Ding ding!); she says the lord can come in when he likes, and (being another Don Juan) he can exercise his lordly rights in their bed for idle half-hours; and that’s why he gave her a large dowry.
[1.3] Cavatina. Susanna is called away (by that bell); Figaro muses over this scenario; if the Count wants to have a ball, he will be dancing to Figaro’s tune; all your machinations I will overturn.
[1.4] Change of scenery? Bartolo and Marcellina (formerly his servant) are plotting to subvert the marriage; she has a contract, and Figaro will be sued for breach of promise; pay up or marry her.
Aria : La vendetta. Bartolo will be glad to get revenge on Figaro, who had conspired to take his ward Rosina from him, and give her to Count Almaviva.
[1.5] Marcellina and Susanna meet. Who defers at the door? Age before beauty, et cetera.
[1.6] Susanna remains. Young Cherubino appears, disconsolate and desolate; the Count found him alone with Barbarina (the gardener’s daughter) and has dismissed him. The randy teenager loves all the women on the estate; and he would like Susanna’s job, dressing and undressing the Countess. He sings his song about his state of mind; crazy with love and longing; he’s a mixed-up kid: I don’t know what I am or what I am doing.
[1.7] Recitative (heaps of it, but plenty of action, too). The Count is coming, and Cherubino hides behind a chair; the Count sits in it; he mentions his appointment as ambassador to Britain, and he will take Figaro and her with him to London; and tonight he would like to meet her in the garden at dusk. Basilio (music teacher and purveyor of gossip) is heard approaching; the Count goes behind the chair, while Cherubino secretly takes his place in it, and Suzy covers him with a dress. Basilio is actually reporting the Count’s admiration for Susan, and the boy’s infatuation for the Countess. The Count reveals himself, and they sing as a trio; Cherubino is silent, but he is discovered and speaks; the Count wishes to summon Figaro to see his bride with the pageboy.
[1.8] Chorus. Figaro arrives with a company of peasants, to honour their lord for abolishing his right to the first night; he has done that publicly but he wants to continue his pursuit of sweet Sue privately; so he prevaricates. He sends Cherubino off to join his regiment as an officer, forthwith.
[9] Aria. Figaro bids him fare well with a parting greeting that contrasts his life as an amorous butterfly with the soldier’s hardships; no more fandango-dancing, now it is marching through mud (fango): Cherubino, on to victory, to military glory! All depart to the sound of a martial march.
Cherubino in love. The end of Act 1 together with the whole of Act 2 covers all the Cherubino scenes, with his two songs about love (or teenager lust), and his two attempts to conceal himself from the wrath of the Count; he pops up again in the finale. He goes on to have an entire French comic opera devoted to him, namely Chérubin, by Jules Massenet: at seventeen he is pursuing a famous dancer, but he has a lover named Nina (Barbarina is not in sight), and he is still treasuring the Countess’s ribbon in his pocket; Nina wins in the end. Frederica von Stade continues to play the pageboy in a recording of this (so his voice has still not broken!). Incidentally, Roger Wilson has revealed in a record review that there is an intact male soprano around, who plays Cherubino. This eases the complication in Act 2, dressing ‘him’ in feminine clothing when he is in actuality a woman pretending to be a boy.
In Act 1 (6-9). Cherubino has been discovered alone with Barbarina, and the Count is sending him away to be an officer in his regiment. Figaro marches him off to military glory (but he does not go).
Act 2
[2.1] Porgi amor (cavatina). The Countess is alone, imploring Love to grant her relief from her sorrow and her sighing, by giving her beloved back to her, or else let her die.
[2.2] She and Susanna discuss the Count’s infidelity. Figaro comes along la-la-laring, as he did when he was the barber of Seville. He has a plan to defeat his employer in his quest for Susanna’s favour. This point always eludes me in the opera house, so I will write it down here: because Susanna has refused the Count’s offer to be confidential attachée to the embassy in London, when he is made ambassador, he will transfer the honour to Marcellina; so, Figaro has sent Basilio to him, with a letter disclosing a proposed assignation of the Countess with a lover at the ball that evening; in his confusion he will not be able to prevent Figaro’s wedding (see the title of the opera). Susanna points out that Marcellina will still oppose their marriage. Figaro says they can disguise Cherubino as Susanna, send the Count to meet ‘her’, and surprise him; and then Figaro will make the Count dance to his tune (as promised in Act 1).
[2.3] Voi che sapete (canzona). Cherubino arrives to be dressed; he is sighing and blushing, and he sings his song ‘Tell me ladies, you who know what love is, whether it is what I have in my heart’. He describes his symptoms: shivers and hot flushes (or similar). Susanna sings an aria as they dress him. They discover the Countess’s ribbon tied around his lily-white arm.
[2.4] The Count is supposedly off hunting for a few hours, but here he is, banging at the locked door, wanting to know what is going on in there. The boy hides in the closet, or dressing room.
[2.5] The Count enters suspiciously; there is a crash from the toilet-room; he is told, eventually, that it is Susanna. The Count has Figaro’s letter with him; he is seeking an explanation.
[2.6] Trio. Susanna enters, unnoticed, while the Count is calling on her to come out of the other room (he is told that she is trying on her wedding dress, and can not); she sizes up the situation, hides in an alcove, and practices voice-throwing; she suggests this could cause a scandal in the house. Indeed, so the Count locks the other doors, and takes his wife with him to get a tool to break into the little room.
[2.7] Cherubino now comes out, and takes his only way of escape by jumping through the second-storey window into the garden.
[2.8] The master and mistress return with the wherewithal to force the door. Slowly she confesses it is a child hiding in the room, after they had been having a harmless diversion, and it is in fact Cherubino. Consternation, the pesky page is everywhere.
[2.9] Susanna appears from the room, to the astonishment of both; he begs her pardon.
[2.10] Enter Figaro, to be questioned about the letter (the women have already said that he sent it); he denies any knowledge of it.
[2.11] Antonio the gardener bursts in, to report a person jumping on his garden and damaging his plants. Figaro takes the blame; but the paper that was dropped was Cherubino’s commission; yes, it still needed to be sealed.
[2.12] Marcellina, Bartolo, and Basilio arrive, demanding justice for the lady; confusion reigns, in a septet.
Act 3
[3.1] The Count recounts (to himself) an account of the details of the muddle (while playing with a machine in this production):
(1) an anonymous letter (about an assignation with Susanna; we know that Figaro concocted it; another letter will replace it soon);
(2) the maid locked in the dressing room (actually Cherubino);
(3) the Countess flustering (she did not know Susanna had taken Cherubino’s place);
(4) a man leaping onto the garden; (5) another (Figaro) claiming he was the one;
(6) the Countess could not be guilty, as she has too much respect for his honour, which is, however, fraught with human frailty.
[3.2] Susanna comes (feigning to search for her Lady’s smelling salts) and tells the Count she will submit to his desire in exchange for a dowry; he calls her Carissima (Dearest).
[3.3] Figaro interrupts, and she takes him off telling him that he has won his case without needing a lawyer.
[3.4] The Count hears this, and muses angrily over exacting revenge on his serf; why should this nobody have and enjoy the object of my passion, Susanna?
[3.5] The lawyer Curzio leads Figaro with Marcellina and Bartolo into the presence of the Count. It is decided: Figaro must pay back the two thousand pieces of silver that Marcellina lent him, or marry her (she confesses she does love him). Figaro claims he is of noble birth, and would need his parents’ consent; he was stolen by bandits in infancy; he has a spatula birthmark, which proves that he is Raffaelo, the child of Marcellina herself, and also of Bartolo. At this moment Susanna arrives with the money to redeem her fiancé, and she is astonished to see him embracing Marcellina lovingly; she slaps his face; but Marcellina offers her embrace to her, as his mother (sua madre? sua madre!).
[3.6] Gazing on the fruit of their early love, the old couple decide to make it a double wedding. Susanna gives Figaro the money, and Bartolo makes a contribution, too. Everyone is blissfully happy, except the Count.
[3.7] Barbarina tells the page Cherubino that they are going to dress him in women’s clothing, so that the Count will not be able to find him.
NB the scenes are not always in this order; Dove sono? appeared before 3.5, and also 3.7.
Act 4 On the night of the wedding celebrations the Countess and her maid Susanna exchange clothes, creating a farcical scene in the garden:Figaro seeks consolation in his mother's embrace the Count is unwittingly making love to his own wife. All ends happily, when all is revealed and the Count begs Rosina for forgiveness.
A BBC poll determined that the three most loved opera arias are not by Verdi or Puccini or Rossini, but by Purcell, Mozart, and Wagner. Can you guess what they are? They are all sad songs, two of them being closely connected with death, the other one is concerned with the loss of the joy of young love. The second place-winner: Dove sono i bei momenti, Where are the lovely moments of sweetness and pleasure? This is sung by the Countess, in Act 3 of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro.
Obsolete:
REVIEW
CHARACTERS
STORYLINE
ANALYSIS
LIBRETTO
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