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:
Diva Dawn Upshaw has a light and sparkly soprano sound, ideally suited to soubrette roles. It was in just such a role that I first heard her – as Susanna in a Metropolitan Opera recording of Mozart’s Le Nozze di Figaro.
Upshaw was born in 1960 in Nashville, Tennessee. She studied at the Manhattan School of Music, after which she won numerous awards, including the Young Concert Artists International Auditions in 1984 and the Walter M. Naumburg Competition in 1985. She made her Met debut in 1984. Upshaw was diagnosed with early-stage breast cancer in 2006, for which she received treatment.