LE NOZZE DI FIGARO
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791)
Opera buffa in four acts in Italian
Liberetto: Lorenzo de Ponte, after Beaumarchais.Premièr at Burgtheater, Vienna – 1 May 1786
24, 26, 30 May - 01, 03†, 07, 09†, 12, 14, 16, 18, 22, 24, 28, 30 June - 05 July 1962
Glyndebourne Opera, Glyndebourne
GLYNDEBOURNE OPERA FESTIVAL
The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra
The Glyndebourne Festival ChorusConductor: Silvio Varviso
Chorus master: Myer Fredman
Stage director: Carl Ebert (1955)
Scene and costumes: Oliver Messel
Choreographer: Robert Harrold
Count Almaviva GABRIEL BACQUIER baritone
Figaro his valet HEINZ BLAKENBURG baritoneDoctor Bartolo CARLO CAVA bass
Don Basilio a music-master HUGUES CUENOD tenor
Cherubino a page EDITH MATHIS soprano
MAUREEN KEETCH (12.06)
Antonio a gardener JOHN DAVIES bass
Don Curizo counsellor at law JOHN KENTISH tenor
Countess Almaviva LEYLA GENCER soprano [Role debut]
Susanna her personal maid MIRELLA FRENI soprano
Marcellina a duenna JOHANNA PETERS soprano
Barbarina Antonio’s niece MARIA ZERI soprano
Bridesmaid PATRICIA MCCARRY
Cover of Programme Book © by BENI MONTESOR
Don Curizo counsellor at law JOHN KENTISH tenor
Countess Almaviva LEYLA GENCER soprano [Role debut]
Susanna her personal maid MIRELLA FRENI soprano
Marcellina a duenna JOHANNA PETERS soprano
Barbarina Antonio’s niece MARIA ZERI soprano
Bridesmaid PATRICIA MCCARRY
Time: Eighteenth Century
Place: The Count’s chateau of Aguas Frescas, near
Seville
† Recording date
Photos © GUY GRAVETT, Sussex
Cover of Programme Book © by BENI MONTESOR
Costume Sketches © OLIVER MESSEL
 |
| With Stage Director Carl Ebert |
OPERA MAGAZINE
1962 March
THE TIMES
1962.05.25
THE OBSERVER
1962.05.27
DOST MAGAZINE
1962.06.15
HAYAT WEEKLY MAGAZINE
1962.07.12
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
1962.07.15
CHICAGO TRIBUNE
1962.07.15
OPERA MAGAZINE
1962 September (Autumn)
OPERA NEWS
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO
Links from OPERA
NEWS ARCHIVES related with Gencer’s performances
Le Nozze di Figaro > Opera News > The Met Opera Guild
...
As the Almavivas, Gabriel Bacquier and Leyla Gencer keep their full power in reserve, invariably shading their lines with the utmost sensitivity and ...
COMPLETE RECORDING
1962.06.03
Recording Excerpt [1962.06.09]
Canzonetta sull'aria... Che soave zeffiretto Act III Scene X
FROM CD BOOKLET
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO
The internationally renowned Glyndebourne Festival was founded in 1934 by John Christie and his wife, the soprano Audrey Mildmay, who inspired him to create an opera house in the grounds of their Sussex home. The inaugural season included performances of Le nozze di Figaro and Cosi fan tutte, with Fritz Busch and Carl Ebert as Music Director and Artistic Director. It embodied Christie's desire to present opera in an undisturbed atmosphere with unlimited opportunity for rehearsal.
Busch has been succeeded by Vittorio Gui, John Pritchard, Bernard Haitink, Andrew Davis and, since 2001, the Russian conductor Vladimir Jurowski. Carl Ebert was followed by Gunther Rennert, Franco Enriquez, Peter Hall, John Cox and Graham Vick. George Christie took over from his father as Chairman in 1958 and as well as retaining his parents' objectives of artistic excellence, his greatest achievement was the rebuilding of the opera house, which opened in 1994, 60 years to the day after the festival’s inauguration. George's son Gus took over as Executive Chairman in January 2000 and David Pickard was appointed as Glyndebourne's General Director in July 2001. Across each of these successions the festival repertoire has expanded to include operas from the baroque to the contemporary, including several new commissions and British premieres.
Glyndebourne on Tour was founded by George Christie in 1968 with the aim of taking productions to a wider audience and offering increased performance opportunities to young singers. It has also maintained a dedication to commissioning and presenting contemporary operas. Glyndebourne Education was formed in 1986 with a commitment to new opera and community projects; it currently hosts over 230 different education activities each year, including both on-site and outreach ventures.
Two integral components of Glyndebourne Festival Opera are its world-class orchestras, the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment. The Glyndebourne Chorus is similarly vital, and its quality and commitment make it one of the pre-eminent choruses in international opera.
Today, Glyndebourne gives around 124 opera performances each year with approximately 86,000 people attending the 76 Festival performances and 55,000 attending Glyndebourne on Tour at seven different UK venues. Glyndebourne maintains a great commitment to investing in the future and is exploring digital innovations that will allow its output to be enjoyed by a new and wider audience. These new innovations will go hand- in-hand with Glyndebourne's long-standing artistic ideals: the pursuit of artistic excellence, the discovery of new talent, and a commitment to new work.
FROM CD BOOKLET
LE NOZZE DI FIGARO
JOHN BARNES AND HIS RECORDING
John Barnes has been involved with Glyndebourne since the late 1950s, and it is solely due to his passion for sound recording, unfailing desire to work with state-of-the-art equipment, and his devotion to Glyndebourne's musical aspirations that this unique collection of recordings can now be made available.
The idea of making archival recordings of performances was first proposed by John in the late 1950s to the then General Administrator, Moran Caplat. John undertook rigorous technical tests and from the start he was adamant that the recordings could only be made with the very best professional technology. In 1960 it was decided to play some of the test recordings to Glyndebourne's founder, John Christie. From his wheelchair in the Old Green Room, John Christie - having heard the first act of Falstaff - declared it to be 'a disgusting noise'.
Fortunately, John Barnes was not discouraged by these comments and, other than a brief period in the 1970s, he has recorded literally thousands of performances at Glyndebourne. It is thanks to John's personal commitment to excellence and devotion to Glyndebourne that these recordings exist for us all to enjoy.
FIGARO: A PERFECT MARRIAGE
FROM CD BOOKLET
© DAVID CAIRNS
Michael Kelly, the Irish tenor who played Basilio and Curzio in the first production of Le nozze di Figaro, has left a vivid picture of one of the rehearsals for the opera. It is a much-quoted account but, for the Mozart lover, it will bear repetition.
'Mozart was on stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra. Figaro's song "Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso" Benucci gave with the greatest animation and power of voice. I was standing close to Mozart, who, sotto voce, was repeating "Bravo! Bravo! Benucci", and when Benucci came to the fine passage "Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria military", which he gave out with Stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself; for the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated "Bravo! Bravo! Maestro. Viva, viva, grande Mozart". The little man acknowledged, by repeated obeisances, the distinguished mark of enthusiastic applause bestowed on him.'
If it is true that the singers to begin with were hostile to the work (as Mozart's early biographer Niemetschek claimed), this may well have been the moment when they came round to it. That would help to explain why Michael Kelly recalled the incident so clearly: it was a moment of shared electricity, when the genius of Mozart's music first dawned on them.
We may wonder why they could not have seen it at once. What could be more captivating, more natural than the musical language of Figaro? For the musicians of 1786, however, it was quite another experience. We think of Mozart's music as representing the typical, quintessential sound of the late 18th century, because he eclipsed nearly all his contemporaries except Haydn. But to the Viennese of his time Figaro was disconcertingly, if not offputtingly, new. Though a long opera, it is incredibly concise. But within that conciseness there is a richness and subtlety of musical incident and colour that had no precedent in opera buffa.
In Figaro Mozart achieves what he had been working towards ever since he began to write for the theatre at the age of eleven: a mastery of dramatic style, a complete language. This language incorporates the skills he had developed in the composition of instrumental music. Figaro comes not long after the set of six string quartets dedicated to Haydn, and near the end of the great series of piano concertos, eight of which appeared in a period of just over a year shortly before he began working on the opera. The two worlds interact: in his hands the concerto becomes a kind of theatre, while the structural principles behind the 'abstract' instrumental music are reproduced on the smaller scale of the operatic number or scene.
Mozart's sense of form is a vital factor in the absolute rightness of Figaro. No matter how intricate the action involved nor how wide the range of emotions covered, each piece is a coherent whole. And such is his grasp of larger timespans that when the drama demands a longer stretch of music - as in the finales of Act 2 and Act 4 - he can combine as many as eight separate numbers, each a complete musical entity, into a single structure precise in its proportions, brilliant in its variety and unerring in its aptness. Music and drama are one, moving in perfect accord.
Every element in Mozart's rich and flexible style - melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, orchestral colour - plays its part. Figaro abounds in memorable tunes. They are memorable, however, not simply because they are catchy and beautiful but because they suit the action exactly. Equally important are the scraps of theme, the melodic tags which a composer of Mozart's ingenuity and harmonic expressiveness can adapt with an almost imperceptible touch to endlessly different shades of meaning.
Or take the orchestration, and the variety of instrumental combinations employed in response to the drama's changing demands. This is something Mozart will take further still in Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte; it will reach its culmination in Die Zauberflöte, where, with few exceptions, each number has its unique colouring. Already in Figaro it is remarkable. Among the many different permutations we may note that the sensuous sound of clarinets, bassoons and horns (without oboes or flutes) is reserved for three numbers: Cherubino's 'Non sò più', the Countess's 'Porgi, amor' and Figaro's 'Aprite un po' quegl' occhi', all pieces in which the characters in their different ways express their sense of being deprived of the love for which they long. Mozart's feeling for the expressive meaning of instrumental colour is an integral part of his pre-eminence as a music- dramatist. The orchestra is a leading player in the comedy.
All this, which we take for granted, was new at the time, in Italian comic opera at least. The works of Mozart's rivals - Paisello, Cimarosa, Martín y Soler, Sarti - offered nothing like it: nothing like the wealth of modulation in Figaro, nothing like its melodic abundance, no orchestration in the Mozartian meaning of the word, no dramma per musica. In Viennese Italian opera of the 1780s, though, such things were not considered desirable. They got in the way of the comedy. Figaro did not do badly at first - as an opera on Beaumarchais' notoriously subversive play Le Mariage de Figaro (banned in the Empire) it was assured of a certain succès de scandale - and the simpler numbers were liked. But before longing it was driven from the stage by Martin's prodigiously successful Una cosa rara.
Mozart had his revenge in the supper scene of Don Giovanni, where the stage band plays an extract from Una cosa rara, together with one from Sarti's I due litiganti, and then puts them in the shade by playing 'Non più andrai'. But Don Giovanni was written for the much more musical public of Prague, which had taken Figaro to its heart. It would be some years before Vienna did the same. Even admirers of Mozart thought he overloaded his comic operas with too much cleverness, too many ideas, and an excessively busy orchestration. To us, as I say, these things are an essential part of that complete dramatic language which Mozart first created in Figaro. No opera has quite Figaro's sense of fitness, of being in total harmony with itself; none conveys the same exuberant sense of discovery: the discovery that music, while keeping within the limits of coherent, compact form, can be made to do anything and can use anything - exquisite melodies, clichés from the common operatic stock - to do it with.
It is this that makes it the radical work it is. People have never stopped accusing da Ponte, Mozart's masterly librettist, of emasculating Beaumarchais' play by removing its political teeth - as though he could have got the libretto past the Imperial censor if he hadn't. As it happens, the music puts a good deal of it back. Figaro's tirade in Act 4 of the opera may omit all reference to the class struggle, but in giving a valet an accompanied recitative - a mode of expression reserved for the upper crust - Mozart was making a clear political point: the servant is as good as his master. And what could be more plainly subversive than those most uncourtly second-beat accents that cut across the rhythm of the minuet in Figaro's 'Se vuol ballare' like a kick up the aristocratic backside?
The political question is, in any case, secondary to the truly revolutionary nature of the work. In Figaro, for the first time, music found the means of embodying the interplay of living people, the feelings and thoughts of rounded human beings, servants and masters, as they arise in response to life. The musical utterance given to each character is his or hers alone. They inhabit an actual world, enchanted yet recognisable, companionable but full of danger.
Figaro is alive with this sense of discovery. Right from the beginning, in the overture, Mozart celebrates it with dazzling vivacity; in its mixture of energy, brilliance, mystery, and directness of musical style, it is the ideal introduction to the drama of the folle journée, the 'crazy day' in the life of Count Almaviva's castle and the community of people who inhabit it.
The range of emotion and the variety of moods and situations encompassed are extraordinary. Above all, the emotions of love, at so many different levels and degrees of experience: the Count avid for sexual adventure, Cherubino in love with love, the Countess nostalgically reliving the lost romance of love, Susanna rapturously anticipating physical fulfilment. And beneath it all, running through this supremely felicitous comedy, the persistent Mozartian undercurrent of sadness, sensed from the outset as the curtain rises: for even while the orchestra evokes with lightest hand the domesticity of the scene and the mutual affection of Figaro and Susanna, something latent in the very sweetness and simplicity of the music takes us unawares and catches at the heart. Mozart combines perfection with a sense of human yearning for it.
Shakespeare sometimes ends his comedies on a similarly ambiguous note. All the same I disagree with those who claim that there is a hollowness in the final resolution of Figaro. Mozart's reconciliations are real. They appeal to the good in human nature. He has an understanding of women and men that is Shakespearean in its psychological insight. His vision embraces the pain and cruelty as well as the compassion, the darkness and the light; but it is the light that prevails.
'Mozart was on stage with his crimson pelisse and gold-laced cocked hat, giving the time of the music to the orchestra. Figaro's song "Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso" Benucci gave with the greatest animation and power of voice. I was standing close to Mozart, who, sotto voce, was repeating "Bravo! Bravo! Benucci", and when Benucci came to the fine passage "Cherubino, alla vittoria, alla gloria military", which he gave out with Stentorian lungs, the effect was electricity itself; for the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated "Bravo! Bravo! Maestro. Viva, viva, grande Mozart". The little man acknowledged, by repeated obeisances, the distinguished mark of enthusiastic applause bestowed on him.'
If it is true that the singers to begin with were hostile to the work (as Mozart's early biographer Niemetschek claimed), this may well have been the moment when they came round to it. That would help to explain why Michael Kelly recalled the incident so clearly: it was a moment of shared electricity, when the genius of Mozart's music first dawned on them.
We may wonder why they could not have seen it at once. What could be more captivating, more natural than the musical language of Figaro? For the musicians of 1786, however, it was quite another experience. We think of Mozart's music as representing the typical, quintessential sound of the late 18th century, because he eclipsed nearly all his contemporaries except Haydn. But to the Viennese of his time Figaro was disconcertingly, if not offputtingly, new. Though a long opera, it is incredibly concise. But within that conciseness there is a richness and subtlety of musical incident and colour that had no precedent in opera buffa.
In Figaro Mozart achieves what he had been working towards ever since he began to write for the theatre at the age of eleven: a mastery of dramatic style, a complete language. This language incorporates the skills he had developed in the composition of instrumental music. Figaro comes not long after the set of six string quartets dedicated to Haydn, and near the end of the great series of piano concertos, eight of which appeared in a period of just over a year shortly before he began working on the opera. The two worlds interact: in his hands the concerto becomes a kind of theatre, while the structural principles behind the 'abstract' instrumental music are reproduced on the smaller scale of the operatic number or scene.
Mozart's sense of form is a vital factor in the absolute rightness of Figaro. No matter how intricate the action involved nor how wide the range of emotions covered, each piece is a coherent whole. And such is his grasp of larger timespans that when the drama demands a longer stretch of music - as in the finales of Act 2 and Act 4 - he can combine as many as eight separate numbers, each a complete musical entity, into a single structure precise in its proportions, brilliant in its variety and unerring in its aptness. Music and drama are one, moving in perfect accord.
Every element in Mozart's rich and flexible style - melody, harmony, rhythm, texture, orchestral colour - plays its part. Figaro abounds in memorable tunes. They are memorable, however, not simply because they are catchy and beautiful but because they suit the action exactly. Equally important are the scraps of theme, the melodic tags which a composer of Mozart's ingenuity and harmonic expressiveness can adapt with an almost imperceptible touch to endlessly different shades of meaning.
Or take the orchestration, and the variety of instrumental combinations employed in response to the drama's changing demands. This is something Mozart will take further still in Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte; it will reach its culmination in Die Zauberflöte, where, with few exceptions, each number has its unique colouring. Already in Figaro it is remarkable. Among the many different permutations we may note that the sensuous sound of clarinets, bassoons and horns (without oboes or flutes) is reserved for three numbers: Cherubino's 'Non sò più', the Countess's 'Porgi, amor' and Figaro's 'Aprite un po' quegl' occhi', all pieces in which the characters in their different ways express their sense of being deprived of the love for which they long. Mozart's feeling for the expressive meaning of instrumental colour is an integral part of his pre-eminence as a music- dramatist. The orchestra is a leading player in the comedy.
All this, which we take for granted, was new at the time, in Italian comic opera at least. The works of Mozart's rivals - Paisello, Cimarosa, Martín y Soler, Sarti - offered nothing like it: nothing like the wealth of modulation in Figaro, nothing like its melodic abundance, no orchestration in the Mozartian meaning of the word, no dramma per musica. In Viennese Italian opera of the 1780s, though, such things were not considered desirable. They got in the way of the comedy. Figaro did not do badly at first - as an opera on Beaumarchais' notoriously subversive play Le Mariage de Figaro (banned in the Empire) it was assured of a certain succès de scandale - and the simpler numbers were liked. But before longing it was driven from the stage by Martin's prodigiously successful Una cosa rara.
Mozart had his revenge in the supper scene of Don Giovanni, where the stage band plays an extract from Una cosa rara, together with one from Sarti's I due litiganti, and then puts them in the shade by playing 'Non più andrai'. But Don Giovanni was written for the much more musical public of Prague, which had taken Figaro to its heart. It would be some years before Vienna did the same. Even admirers of Mozart thought he overloaded his comic operas with too much cleverness, too many ideas, and an excessively busy orchestration. To us, as I say, these things are an essential part of that complete dramatic language which Mozart first created in Figaro. No opera has quite Figaro's sense of fitness, of being in total harmony with itself; none conveys the same exuberant sense of discovery: the discovery that music, while keeping within the limits of coherent, compact form, can be made to do anything and can use anything - exquisite melodies, clichés from the common operatic stock - to do it with.
It is this that makes it the radical work it is. People have never stopped accusing da Ponte, Mozart's masterly librettist, of emasculating Beaumarchais' play by removing its political teeth - as though he could have got the libretto past the Imperial censor if he hadn't. As it happens, the music puts a good deal of it back. Figaro's tirade in Act 4 of the opera may omit all reference to the class struggle, but in giving a valet an accompanied recitative - a mode of expression reserved for the upper crust - Mozart was making a clear political point: the servant is as good as his master. And what could be more plainly subversive than those most uncourtly second-beat accents that cut across the rhythm of the minuet in Figaro's 'Se vuol ballare' like a kick up the aristocratic backside?
The political question is, in any case, secondary to the truly revolutionary nature of the work. In Figaro, for the first time, music found the means of embodying the interplay of living people, the feelings and thoughts of rounded human beings, servants and masters, as they arise in response to life. The musical utterance given to each character is his or hers alone. They inhabit an actual world, enchanted yet recognisable, companionable but full of danger.
Figaro is alive with this sense of discovery. Right from the beginning, in the overture, Mozart celebrates it with dazzling vivacity; in its mixture of energy, brilliance, mystery, and directness of musical style, it is the ideal introduction to the drama of the folle journée, the 'crazy day' in the life of Count Almaviva's castle and the community of people who inhabit it.
The range of emotion and the variety of moods and situations encompassed are extraordinary. Above all, the emotions of love, at so many different levels and degrees of experience: the Count avid for sexual adventure, Cherubino in love with love, the Countess nostalgically reliving the lost romance of love, Susanna rapturously anticipating physical fulfilment. And beneath it all, running through this supremely felicitous comedy, the persistent Mozartian undercurrent of sadness, sensed from the outset as the curtain rises: for even while the orchestra evokes with lightest hand the domesticity of the scene and the mutual affection of Figaro and Susanna, something latent in the very sweetness and simplicity of the music takes us unawares and catches at the heart. Mozart combines perfection with a sense of human yearning for it.
Shakespeare sometimes ends his comedies on a similarly ambiguous note. All the same I disagree with those who claim that there is a hollowness in the final resolution of Figaro. Mozart's reconciliations are real. They appeal to the good in human nature. He has an understanding of women and men that is Shakespearean in its psychological insight. His vision embraces the pain and cruelty as well as the compassion, the darkness and the light; but it is the light that prevails.
What the press said....
"It will surprise no-one who saw her Zerlina here last year or
recently at Covent Garden that Miss Freni makes an enchanting Susanna, but Mr
Blankenburg's Figaro is new to English audiences and is entirely worthy of her,
concealing a wealth of energy and passion beneath his chubby smile."
The Times, 25 June 1962
"My own love of Mozart's operas began with the old Glyndebourne
records of Figaro, and now to hear the Overture begin there, catch the pungency
of Glyndebourne woodwinds breaking into the busy string line, is an experience
to set beside hearing the first E flat of The Ring well from the Bayreuth
pit."
Financial Times, 25 May 1962
"... In Silvio Varviso, Glyndebourne have found a conductor who can
communicate Mozart's warmth of heart and amazing complexity of mood as well as
his brilliance and gaiety."
The Observer, 27 May 1962
"I admit I lost my heart to the superb Susanna of Mirella Freni,
whose effortless singing was equalled by charm of character."
"With his [Varviso's] conducting the listener was not so much
conscious of the music as charmed and consumed by it - and in the end entranced
by its eternal beauty"
Daily Express, 25 June 1962
"... a vintage production ... five or six individual performances
that it would almost be impossible to better."
"... the performance brought us closer to the spirit of Mozart and
of Glyndebourne than anything else that we can see in this delightful opera
house. ... One of the very finest performances of the opera that I have
seen."
Music and Musicians, July 1962
