World premiere: 1 May 1786, Burgtheater, Vienna
Premiere at the Bolshoi (Kamenny) Theatre: 13 January 1851, Imperial Italian Opera Company
Premiere at the Mariinsky Theatre: 25 September 1901 (performed in Russian, translated by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky)
Premiere of this production: 23 October 1998
Running time 3 hours 30 minutes
The performance has one interval
Any preparations prior to a wedding can be both pleasant and worrying, especially if they concern the soon-to be marital bed of the newlyweds. But what if a married master has his eye on the bride-to-be who is a maidservant and an ageing woman creditor sets her cap at the groom? It would appear that the god Eros has decided to mix up each of these couples at the castle of Count Almaviva, and his arrows of passion are easily able to overcome all differences as to age and social position. It is easy to become confused at the chaos of the various declarations of love that ensue; the clouds above the protagonists at times become more dense, at others they are magically dispelled, although universal harmony in the opera Le nozze di Figaro is only truly established in the finale. And it is not so much that each gets what he or she “deserves” in terms of status: a maid for a manservant, a count for a countess, a teenage girl for an adolescent boy the same age and a father for the single mother of a child. The most important thing in Mozart’s opera is the triumph of love, the victory of love as a clear, lofty and dependable condition of the soul over inconstant corporeal attractions. In accordance with the laws of classical theatre, all events occur within exactly one day: the day, truly mad in terms of its comedy and the absurdity of the situations, passes into a delightful evening, when all the knots of this complex web of intrigue are finally untangled. The next morning promises to be totally different – kindly, clear and pure, although the question “for how long?” remains open-ended.
The embarrassing, ridiculous, tricky and simply curious situations in which the characters find themselves – initially with Beaumarchais and subsequently with Lorenzo Da Ponte and Mozart – have afforded the production team a plethora of possibilities to express their own wit. Yuri Alexandrov’s production is filled with directing innovations and details (it is worth taking theatre binoculars!), thanks to which on-stage there reigns an improvisational feel of commedia dell'arte. In the set designs and costumes (created by Vyacheslav Okunev) there is an abundance of frills, flounces and drapery so appropriate for all kinds of crafty games. They are frothy, like champagne, which at the end of Act II flows across the stage in the direct sense of the word. In line with the wishes of the production team, this Nozze di Figaro sees the return of the librettist’s veiled social and political subtext of the scandalous French comedy written ten years before the storming of the Bastille. “Ghosts of the revolution” at times literally hack at the luxurious interiors of the Count’s castle, at others they peer through the windows, observing the suspiciously awkward dance of the loyal “peasant women” who are hoisting aloft garlands of flowers as if they were army duffle bags.
At the historic Mariinsky Theatre, Le nozze di Figaro is performed in Italian. In the revised supertitles in Russian, audiences will not read the familiar words “A playful, curly-haired boy in love”, though the new translation of the libretto will allow them to approach the original more closely, discover the myriad nuances and justly appraise the liveliness, sensuality and comet-like crispness that run through it. Khristina Batyushina
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