OVERTURE OPERA GUIDES in association with We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with Overture Publishing on this series of opera guides and to build on the work ENO did over twenty years ago on the Calder Opera Guide Series. As well as reworking and updating existing titles, Overture and ENO have commissioned new titles for the series and all of the guides will be published to coincide with repertoire being staged by the company at the London Coliseum. This volume is the third of the Overture Opera Guides to be devoted to Mozart (the earlier volumes were on Idomeneo and Don Giovanni), and it is issued to mark a new production at ENO of The Marriage of Figaro, directed by Fiona Shaw and conducted by Paul Daniel. The cast includes Iain Paterson as Figaro, Devon Guthrie as Susanna, Kate Valentine as the Countess and Roland Wood as the Count. We hope that these guides will prove an invaluable resource now and for years to come, and that by delving deeper into the history of an opera, the poetry of the libretto and the nuances of the score, readers’ understanding and appreciation of the opera and the art form in general will be enhanced. John Berry Artistic Director, ENO October 2011 The publisher John Calder began the Opera Guides series under the editorship of the late Nicholas John in associa- tion with English National Opera in 1980. It ran until 1994 and eventually included forty-eight titles, covering fifty-eight operas. The books in the series were intended to be companions to the works that make up the core of the operatic repertory. They contained articles, illustrations, musical examples and a complete libretto and singing translation of each opera in the series, as well as bibliographies and discographies. The aim of the present relaunched series is to make available again the guides already published in a redesigned format with new illustrations, some newly commissioned articles, updated reference sections and a literal translation of the libretto that will enable the reader to get closer to the meaning of the origi- nal. New guides of operas not already covered will be published alongside the redesigned ones from the old series. Gary Kahn Series Editor Sponsors of the Overture Opera Guides for the 2011/12 Season at ENO Eric Adler Frank and Lorna Dunphy Richard Everall Ian and Catherine Ferguson Ralph Wells Lord and Lady Young Eric Adler and Richard Everall are gratefully acknowledged for their assistance in the 2017 reprint of this volume Le nozze di Figaro Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Overture Opera Guides Series Editor Gary Kahn Editorial Consultant Philip Reed OP OVERTURE OVERTURE OPERA GUIDES in association with Overture Publishing an imprint of ALMA BOOKS 3 Castle Yard Richmond Surrey TW10 6TF United Kingdom Articles by John Wells, Basil Deane and Stephen Oliver first published by John Calder (Publishers) Ltd in 1983 © the authors, 1983 Articles by Max Loppert, David Syrus, George Hall and Julian Rushton first published in this volume © the authors, 2011 This Le nozze di Figaro Opera Guide first published by Overture Publishing, an imprint of Alma Books Ltd, in 2011. Reprinted 2017 © Alma Books Ltd, 2011, 2017 All rights reserved English translation of libretto © Opernführer, Bern Printed in UK by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY ISBN: 978-1-84749-707-9 All the materials in this volume are reprinted with permission or presumed to be in the public domain. Every effort has been made to ascertain and acknowl- edge their copyright status, but should there have been any unwitting oversight on our part, we would be happy to rectify the error in subsequent printings. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), with- out the prior written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not be resold, lent, hired out or otherwise circu- lated without the express prior consent of the publisher. Contents List of Illustrations 8 Living Together, Singing Together 9 Max Loppert A Society Marriage 17 John Wells A Musical Commentary 25 Basil Deane Recitatives in Figaro: Some Thoughts 39 David Syrus Music and Comedy in Le nozze di Figaro 49 Stephen Oliver A Selective Performance History 57 George Hall Thematic Guide 75 Le nozze di Figaro, Libretto 83 Note on the Text, Julian Rushton 85 Act One 91 Act Two 143 Act Three 223 Act Four 273 Select Discography 321 Le nozze di Figaro on DVD, a Selection 329 Select Bibliography 335 Mozart Websites 339 Note on the Contributors 341 Acknowledgements 343 List of Illustrations 1. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1789 2. Lorenzo Da Ponte 3. Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais 4. Vignette from Act One of Le Mariage de Figaro 5. The Burgtheater in Vienna 6. Silhouettes of the original cast 7. Mozart’s autograph score for the beginning of the last scene of the Act Two finale 8. Carl Ebert’s first production at the Glyndebourne Festival ( Guy Gravett) 9. Carl Ebert’s revised production at the Glyndebourne Festival (Roger Wood) 10. Peter Brook’s production at the Royal Opera House (Baron) 11. Kiri Te Kanawa and Reri Grist at the Royal Opera House (Reg Wilson) 12. Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Graziella Sciutti and Evelyn Lear at the Salzburg Festival (Hildegard Steinmetz) 13. Geraint Evans and Reri Grist at the Salzburg Festival ( Klaus Hennch) 14. Jacek Strauch and John Tomlinson at ENO (Reg Wilson) 15. Marie McLaughlin and Karita Mattila at the Royal Opera House (Zoé Dominic) 16. Fritz Busch (Remington) 17. Karl Böhm 18. Charles Mackerras 19. René Jacobs (Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times) 20. Peter Sellars’s production at the PepsiCo Summerfare (Peter Krupenye) 21. Graham Vick’s production at ENO (Clive Barda/ArenaPAL) 22. Dieter Dorn’s production at the Bayrerische Staatsoper (Wilfried Hösl) 23. Barrie Kosky’s production at the Komische Oper, Berlin (Monika Rittershaus) 24. David McVicar’s production at the Royal Opera House (Clive Barda/ArenaPAL) 25. Josse Wieler and Sergio Morabito’s production at Netherlands Opera (A.T. Schaefer) 26. Claus Guth’s production at the Salzburg Festival (Monika Rittershaus) 27. Kasper Holten’s production at the Theater an der Wien (Rolf Bock) 8 Thematic Guide Themes from the opera have been identified by the numbers in square brackets in the article on the music. These are also printed at corresponding points in the libretto, so that the words can be related to the musical themes. 75 Note on the Text Julian Rushton The ordering of scenes in Act Three departs from the sequence of scenes in Beaumarchais and may appear somewhat arbitrary. In 1965 R.B. Moberly and Christopher Raeburn suggested that scenes five to eight were rearranged at a late stage by Mozart and Da Ponte. They suggested a revised order for scenes five to eight, following the Count’s scena ‘Hai già vinta la causa’ and the aria ‘Vedrò, mentre io sospiro’.1 TrAdiTionAL order MoberLy/rAeburn order Scene five recit.: ‘È decisa la lite’; Scene five recit.: Barbarina, sextet ‘Riconosci in questo amplesso’ Cherubino ‘Andiam, andiam bel (Count and Curzio exit) paggio’ Scene six recit.: ‘Eccovi, oh caro Scene six scena (Countess): ‘E amico’ Susanna non vien’; aria: ‘Dove sono i bei momenti’ Scene seven recit.: Barbarina, Scene seven recit.: ‘È decisa la lite’; Cherubino (Andiam, andiam bel sextet ‘Riconosci in questo amplesso’ paggio)* (Count and Curzio exit) Scene eight scena (Countess): ‘E Scene eight recit.: ‘Eccovi, oh caro Susanna non vien’; aria: ‘Dove sono i amico’ bei momenti’ The versions unite for scene nine, the entry of Antonio (recit.: ‘Io vi dico, signor’). This order can be performed only if Bartolo and 1 R.B. Moberly and Christopher Raeburn, ‘Mozart’s “Figaro”: The Plan of Act III’, in Music & Letters, 46 (1965), pp. 134–36. 85 Le nozze di Figaro Antonio are taken by different singers, as there is no time available to change costume from doctor to gardener, and this provides a motive for the alleged reordering. The Moberly-Raeburn suggestion has considerable merits: a. It permits the Count to leave the stage, as is normal following a scena with recitative and aria. b. In the traditional order, Cherubino and Barbarina leave the stage and Antonio appears immediately to report that the page’s clothes have been found in his cottage. c. Figaro is involved in the short scene three; Susanna says ‘you’ve won your case’ (‘hai già vinta la causa’), precipitating the Count’s scena. But there is no time for a trial to take place before scene five, in which Figaro’s parentage is revealed. Moving the Countess’s scena to this point allows time for a brief trial off stage. d. In scene six Susanna hands Figaro her dowry, money that came from the Countess. She would surely go to the Countess after ‘Eccovi, oh caro amico’ to report these developments, but the Countess appears and complains that she has not come: ‘E Susanna non vien’. e. The Countess’s scena is better placed before the outcome of the trial is known. This sequence is less confusing for the audience, and it juxtaposes the two grand soliloquies for the nobility, mir- roring the juxtaposition of soliloquies for the servant couple in Act Four. A number of conductors, following the lead of Charles Mackerras with English National Opera, have adopted the revised order, al- though it requires an additional singer for Antonio. Moberly and Raeburn tried to support their theory by reference to the keys of the various numbers, superficially more logical in their ordering, but such key-schemes, however seductive on paper, fail to take into account the transition of keys affected by recitative; the keys of the main numbers are not juxtaposed and Mozart’s practice in this opera and elsewhere (for instance in Don Giovanni) suggest that an apparently rational order of keys came low at best among his priorities.