Opera Sense recommended recordings of The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro): Here are five facts to know about The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro), one of the greatest operas ever written. 230 years after its premiere, we are still talking about it, performing it, and relishing Read more…
For me, opera begins with Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) – the first of three Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Lorenzo Da Ponte collaborations (the other two were Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). Of course there were many operatic masterpieces before this 1786 work, even a couple by Mozart himself (Idomeneo and Die Entführung aus dem Serail, for instance), but there’s something special about Le Nozze, a work that has never been out of the standard repertory. Premiering three years before the French Revolution, Le Nozze is a product of the Enlightenment, a time when reason ruled and liberty, fraternity, and equality were ideals worth fighting for.
Opera Sense recommended recordings of Le Nozze di Figaro:
The Metropolitan Opera’s latest production of Don Giovanni was about as traditional as it gets, but that’s just fine when the music is as exceptional as Mozart’s and the words as witty as Da Ponte’s.
Near the end of Act I, from the Met’s website
The Met’s second installment of its Live in HD program took place on Saturday afternoon, October 22, 2016. The opera was Don Giovanni, the product of the second of three Da Ponte – Mozart collaborations (the first was Le Nozze di Figaro, written a year before Giovanni, in 1786, and the third was Così fan tutte, which premiered in 1790, a year before the composer’s death). The work is arguably the pinnacle of Mozart’s ability to depict characters in music, and it has provided fodder for critics, philosophers, musicians, and other artists ceaselessly for nearly 230 years.
Here are the ten most popular operas by number of performances according to Operabase, perhaps the world’s greatest organizer of opera data. The figures apply to the 2017/2018 season. Verdi appears twice, Puccini and Mozart three times each, and Bizet and Rossini both once. La traviata, by Verdi. This masterpiece Read more…