<<< previous performance <<< >>> next performance >>>
Le nozze di Figaro
“If Mozart had conjured up a voice for the Count made of the ingredients beauty, virility, flexibility and intelligent interpretation, Gerald Finley's baritone would have been the result.” Münchner Merkur
|
Composer |
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
|
Libretto |
Lorenzo da Ponte after Beaumarchais |
|
Venue and Dates |
Haus für Mozart, Salzburg Festival 12, 15(m), 17, 22, 24, 26(m), 28 August 2007 |
|
Conductor |
Daniel Harding |
|
Director |
Claus Guth |
|
Performers |
Il Conte di Almaviva: Gerald Finley La Contessa Almaviva: Dorothea Röschmann Figaro: Luca Pisaroni Susanna: Diana Damrau Cherubino: Martina Janková Marcellina: Marie McLaughlin Don Bartolo: Franz-Josef Selig Don Basilio: Patrick Henckens Don Curzio: Oliver Ringelhahn Barberina: Eva Liebau Antonio: Gabor Bretz First Bridesmaid: Second Bridesmaid: Cherub: Uli Kirsch Vienna Philharmonic Concert Association of the Vienna State Opera Chorus (Thomas Lang, Chorus master) |
|
Production |
Sets and costumes: Christian Schmidt Lighting: Olaf Winter Dramaturgy: Ronny Dietrich Choreography: Ramses Sigl |
From the Salzburg Festival website:
With Le nozze di Figaro Mozart created a world theatre of human passions that testifies to the elemental force of eroticism. All forms of love and desire are found in this opera, and the four generations of characters – presented in exemplary fashion – are completely torn between morality, desire and impulse. In Figaro Mozart not only allows all kinds of intense human passions but also portrays how they can get out of control and escalate to extremes, thus setting his opera far apart from the comedy by Beaumarchais.
That was why I wanted on the one hand to follow the characters into their darkest psychological depths but at the same time leave space for exploring the Utopian moments in Mozart’s music, which for me are so special in the score of Figaro. An invented character, a kind of Eros-Angel, indicates this confusing other dimension that pervades the opera. He always takes up a position when the characters find themselves in situations that are diametrically opposed to their intentions when guided by reason.
New on the Horizon
Festspiele magazine (Johannes Ifkovits), 2 2007
Translated by Janet Woodall
The Canadian baritone is prepared for Salzburg. In 2004 he gave a guest performance as Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte under Sir Simon Rattle at the Easter Festival and last year he sang in the concert version of Handel’s Ariodante. But this year he’ll crown his career at the Salzburg Festival with his opera debut as Count Almaviva in Le Nozze di Figaro. “I always wanted to be involved in the town of Mozart’s birth and get a chance to perform here”, the Canadian is now seeing his dream fulfilled.
Gerald Finley has his career firmly established. He received his education at Ottawa University, Canada, in Great Britain at the Royal College of Music, at King’s College Cambridge, and at the National Opera Studio with support from the Friends of Covent Garden and the Countess of Munster Musical Trust. He made his debut as Sid in Britten’s Albert Herring at the festival in Glyndebourne, sang Papageno in Mozart’s Die Zauberflöte, Guglielmo in Cosi fan tutte and the title role in Le nozze di Figaro at the opening of the new festival House at Glyndebourne in 1994.
Engagements for this family man, a father of two boys, continued at the Teatro Regio, Parma, the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden in London, the Metropolitan Opera in New York and the Parisian Opera. He achieved an extraordinary success at the Lyric Opera in Chicago as Papageno in Die Zauberflöte, the American press were full of praise. Today, this Montreal-born Canadian has made an international name for himself, and has matured to be one of the leading singers and dramatic interpreters of his generation.
Every time that this ‘Briton-by-choice’ travels from his current home in Sussex, in the South of England, to Salzburg, the panoramic views, the ensemble of steep mountains, and the baroque cityscape overwhelm him. Here he likes not only to explore the city but also to discover the surrounding country with its beautiful lakes together with his family.
Gerald Finley has sung the role of Count Almaviva already in Amsterdam, Paris and London. Often enough to more than just pass in Salzburg. In addition he has seen the DVD of last year’s new production by Claus Goth, so he knows what to expect, and is delighted to finally make his opera debut at the Summer Festival.
From the Salzburg Festspiele magazine “Daily” Nr 15, 12/13 August 2007
Nozzi di Figaro, in a production by Claus Guth and conducted by Nikolaus Harnoncourt. Among the 22 musical dramas of Salzburg’s genius loci performed during the Mozart year, it was certainly the most controversial. Guth and Harnoncourt surprised, astonished and also irritated many an audience member with their very unusual reading that had a tendency to pessimism. The masterwork of Opera buffa – which usually trips the light fantastic cheerfully through palaces and parks – was darkened and pensive, lacking any rococo sweetness. Guth had taken his concept for the production precisely, exactly and with great imagination from the depths of the subtext of Mozart’s and Da Ponte’s masterwork. All of which makes this Figaro the ideal candidate for the Nocturnal Side of Reason, as this year’s Festival motto goes. Almost all the leading roles are newly cast; only Dorothea Röschmann will be heard again as the Countess. This year’s Susanna is named Diana Damrau, at her side is the Figaro of young Luca Pisaroni. The Canadian baritone Gerald Finley is the Count poaching in other men’s territory, and Martina Janková lends Cherubino her clear-as-a-bell voice. Daniel Harding will be at the Vienna Philharmonic’s conductor’s podium – and surely, we can look forward to a contrary reading by the young Briton.
What the critics say
Die Presse, 14 August 2007 (Walter Weidringer) http://www.diepresse.com/home/kultur/kultursommer/323271/index.do
Translated by Ursula Turecek
Le nozze di Figaro: Without Netrebko, yet better
Salzburg Festival: Barely recognisable: „Le nozze di Figaro“ without the star-singer and Harnoncourt.
Feelings may turn the world upside down: That’s what stage designer Christian Schmidt shows us with the staircase in which Salzburg’s “Figaro” takes place, straight as well as rotated 180° in the last act, as if it was a picture puzzle by MC Escher. But the whole performance is more or less upside down. This is the amazing thing with this restudied staging of this production that was made in the Mozart-year 2006 and achieved such broad publicity via TV-broadcast and publication on DVD.
Director Claus Guth only changed a few things (Marcellina’s and Basilio’s arias in the last act are deleted now) – and yet the performance is barely recognisable: This “Figaro” has become much more informal, funny and entertaining. Hardcore-fans of Harnoncourt will regret that it moves closer to convention from the extraordinary, but others will mind less. Alongside this question of taste the facts remain: Guth’s crucial idea to send the additional character of “Cherubim” (brilliant again: Uli Kirsch) into a high-necked, inhibited world of suppressed feelings and make him cause great confusion there, works much better now – because you don’t get the impression any more that the actual persons are pushed into the second row and are only of little importance. That may be because his schemes, equipped with all kinds of wondrous and poetic theatrical ideas, are known now, and because Guth actually made some amendments in their weighing.
Or simply because the extensively new cast consists partly of more intense singer-actors: It seems to me that with Diana Damrau Guth developed a much smarter and more active Susanna than Anna Netrebko put on stage. Last year employed as an impeccably dramatic “Queen of the Night”, Diana Damrau now makes audible an almost equally perfect lyric harmony. And Gerald Finley, the biggest gain in vocal authority in comparison to the original cast, who sings the Count brilliantly at any time, also does so when “Cherubim” is literally sitting in his neck, but replaces the Strindberg character with an independent neurotic who could rather come from an early Hitchcock film.
Less heavily weighing slowness
Figaro, equipped with glasses and notebook and this time in the form of promising Luca Pisaroni who sounded unconstrained, now seems to have improved his image too. Dorothea Röschmann repeats her extravagant Countess; only Martina Jankova, sounding a little inflexible, as Cherubino cannot make us forget the celestial Christine Schäfer.
Neither is Nikolaus Harnoncourt completely forgotten: The heavily weighing slowness that had shaped his interpretation and the complete performance is quoted on stage at the beginning of the third and fourth act. It also seems to be Daniel Harding’s deliberate wish to sometimes remind of his predecessor’s extremes at the rostrum, but without turning each note twice and examining its value before at last making the orchestra play it. All in all music and action are accelerated correspondingly and the Philharmonic make an experienced “Figaro”, amplified by some gaudy attacks and prolonged tempi, go off. But the strongest impressions of this almost unanimously acclaimed evening came from the stage.
Wiener Zeitung, 14 August 2007 (kriech)
Translated by Ursula Turecek
The sex-inspirer’s clutches
A completely changed ensemble of singers and a more subtly adjusted production: The first night of the restudied “Figaro” at the Haus für Mozart on Sunday evening met with unanimous approval. Now the young Englishman Daniel Harding is conducting instead of Nikolaus Harnoncourt and this is not only a leap of one and a half generations. Harding accomodates the Vienna Philharmonic as well as the audience by more than one step
Not that he turned the tempo screw in an exaggerated way, but compared to Harnoncourt’s radically slackening tempo-craft, Daniel Harding shows himself more compliable. He makes the orchestra act elegantly, yet handily in phrasing and with meaty volume.
This comes across clearly as less cryptic, but decidedly more vivid than with Harnoncourt from which in turn there are immediate benefits on stage. When the ensembles get out of time because of excitement, as happened several times during the first night, Harding puts things right again with strong nerves.
Generally this “Figaro” clearly gained something, also because Claus Guth has adjusted the staging more subtly. The fact that the arias in the fourth act were taken out again makes the whole thing more concise, now they spare themselves the game of open-the-door, close-the-door that was so paralysing last year. In detail the drawing of the characters has gained something. The schemes of Eros, this mute but artistic operator introduced by the director, emerge more precisely – but also his powerlessness.
The Count is a yuppie
Martina Janková is Cherubino. Last year Christine Schäfer set a benchmark in this role. It would be unfair to judge the petite Czech with it immediately. She interprets this pubertally torn character in all its contrariness, allows for temper flushes (in her acting and voice), in the first notes of her recitative you really think to have a mutating boy in front of you. Of course this goes well with the director’s intentions to show in Cherubino the nucleus of all sexual desire. Everyone cuddles him without restraint.
At the other end of the emotional range: the Count with a clear obsession for feminine beings from which he himself suffers probably the most. It’s Gerald Finley who sings him now, with impressive vocal differentiation. This Count is so authentic because he is still a daredevil yuppie.
Dorothea Röschmann is the only one among the main characters who belonged to last year’s ensemble: Maybe the rich vibrato in her intonation, her rather affected drama is not to everyone’s liking. But in this way the Countess’s sufferings receive emphasis of course.
Damrau is a valuable addition
Diana Damrau instead of Anna Netrebko as Susanna: a valuable addition. Last year Netrebko remained almost too reticent, too adapted to the ensemble. Mozart is not her strong point. This is different with Diana Damrau: as a decided coloratura soprano she inherently introduces a different timbre, a different temper too, yet she has the lyricism of “Deh vieni, non tardar” under optimal control.
Luca Pisaroni is Figaro now: he interprets less of a buffo character than his predecessor Ildebrando d’Arcangelo: Pisaroni does a rather primitive, almost coarse Figaro. Susanna may bargain for a real macho.
Completely renewed in an excellent way
Münchner Merkur, 14 August 2007 (Markus Thiel)
Translated by Ursula Turecek
Salzburg-crown for “Figaro”
The restudy of Claus Guth’s Mozart-production for the Festival was convincing with a new singer-ensemble.
Salzburg’s scheduling likes to go to the extent of peculiarities. In 2004 for example Mozart’s “Così fan tutte” with Rattle and exquisite singers around Cecilia Bartoli was developed at Easter for just two (!) evenings, just to be brought out again only weeks later in summer and with a new ensemble under Philippe Jordan. A similar thing happened to its sibling work: “Le nozze di Figaro”, in 2006 the highlight of “Mozart total” and exploited in the media because of Harnoncourt, Netrebko & Co., is presented largely re-cast this year.
Among those who remained from Claus Guth’s production that moves the “day of madness” quite a bit closer to a lyric tragedy, are Dorothea Röschmann as big-voiced, somewhat breathless Countess and Uli Kirsch as mute Cherubim, a little angel in a sailor suit, a dispenser of eros who confuses feelings and in the end, when reason and anger prevail again, jumps out of the window because of frustration.
What ennobled the production last year was the unique symbiosis of scene and music. An intense, exact and slow interpretation rich in detail, developed in the co-operation of Guth and Nikolaus Harnoncourt. So no rewarding task for the current conductor Daniel Harding. Different from his brutal Salzburg “Giovanni”, Harding acted less tense, rather intent on soft, flexible, slim phrasings. Harding’s mistake: Too often he tried to revive Harnoncourt’s tempi and hesitations. A musical blue-print, less precise and lacking more in content than the “original”, especially as the Vienna Philharmonic repeated over vast passages the very version they are used to from their State Opera.
Regarding the rest of the cast the record- and DVD-company certainly were overhasty: The 2007 ensemble is almost entirely better. Gerald Finley's uptight Almaviva on the verge of a nervous breakdown may be less quirky than Bo Skovhus’s, but vocally he outpaces his predecessor by far.
If Mozart had conjured up a voice for the Count made of the ingredients beauty, virility, flexibility and intelligent interpretation, Gerald Finley's baritone would have been the result.
Thanks to Diana Damrau, Susanna is upgraded. The pleasure in acting and singing jumps from every quaver with her. Miss Damrau succeeds in interpreting refinement, enchanting moments of piano, effortlessly „switching“ from one atmosphere to the next affect, even tangibly flaring up with a reality as if she had found a soulmate in this character.
Furthermore the interaction with the partner works more credibly: Luca Pisaroni makes some sort of artist of Figaro, giving a more jaunty, youthfully fresh calibre to the title role. Only Martina Janková (Cherubino) had the insoluble task to sing against the first cast Christine Schäfer, but she fared most worthily. And with guru Harnoncourt hardly gone, Basilio’s and Marcellina’s piece-stopping arias were cut from the fourth act. Which could still remain this way, in fact, the whole production can remain the way it is now: Despite of Andrea Breth’s “Eugene Onegin” it is this one that deserves the 2007-crown.
Merker (Volkmar Parschalk) 12 August 2007
Translated by Janet Woodall
Alongside the co-production with the Marionettentheater (“Der Schauspieldirektor” and “Bastien and Bastienne”) this year brought the Salzburger Festspiele a unique, large-scale opera from the Mozart year 2006: Claus Guth’s staging of “Figaro” at the House of Mozart.
In place of Harnoncourt, the 32 year old Englishman Daniel Harding stood on the conductor’s rostrum for the first time. Leaving out Marcellina’s and Basilio’s arias in the 4th act Harding, who is pushed by the disc industry, preferred a swifter tempo with the Vienna Philharmonic than Harnoncourt last year. This resulted in an interpretation that was certainly less profound and less corresponding to Mozart’s intentions but that nevertheless advanced the plot
The 43 year old Frankfurt-based director Claus Guth (who will be the producer of next year’s “Don Giovanni” and of “Cosi fan tutte” in 2009) has thoroughly revised, tightened and altogether improved the concept of his 2006 staging. Guth did leave in the superfluous Cherubim figure (a dancer, half angel/half devil) who appears again and again when one of the opera’s characters is struck by love and who even jumps onto the Count’s shoulder in his big aria in Act 3, albeit in an abridged form.
Still a surprise to oneself is that the plot is banished into Guth’s and his equipper Christian Schmidt’s concept, that there is no furniture in the Count’s castle and that the actors have to settle for a great flight of stairs for their actions. Yet the often crude scenes work better than in the previous year. One has accustomed oneself to the fact that Susanna yields to the Count right from the start and that Figaro knows what he has to expect.
Diana Damrau is (instead of Anna Netrebko) cast as Susanna this year; a cunning, but after all loveable, silver-voiced hussy. The Count is excellently sung and played by Gerald Finley, Luca Pisaroni is an intellectual, bespectacled, but nevertheless sharp Figaro. Dorothea Röschmann an energetic Countess, Martina Janková a magically impish Cherubino. The smaller parts, with Franz-Josf Selig (Bartolo), Marie McLaughlin (Marcellina), Patrick Henckens (Basillio), Gabor Bretz (a much too young Antonio), were all excellently cast.
