W.A. MOZART

 

Le nozze di Figaro 

 

Il Conte di Almaviva- Simon Keenlyside

La Contessa di Almaviva -Véronique Gens

Susanna - Patrizia Ciofi

Figaro - Lorenzo Regazzo

Cherubino - Angelika Kirchschlager

Marcellina - Marie McLaughlin

Don Basilio, Don Curzio - Kobie van Rensburg

Bartolo, Antonio - Antonio Abete

Barbarina- Nuria Rial

Due Ragazze -    Elisabeth Rapp, Yeree Suh

 

 

Collegium Vocale Gent

Concerto Köln /René Jacobs

 

Le nozze di Figaro was premiered at the Imperial and Royal Court Theatre on 1 May 1786, the first of Mozart’s operas to be written without a commission and a new chapter in operatic history. 

René Jacobs’ historic performances of Le Nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées in October 2001 led to rave reviews in the French press and a revival there in June 2004, to be followed by a concert performance at the Barbican on June 29th.

We are fortunate to have this milestone recording with a youthful, international all-star cast, in the now customary luxury packaging from harmonia mundi France.

 

Some thoughts during rehearsals of Le nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées:

“To claim any sort of ‘authenticity’ would be unpardonably pretentious. One recalls Nikolaus Harnoncourt’s witty retort to a journalist who asked him if his Monteverdi was ‘authentic’: that he only knew how to produce ‘authentic Harnoncourt’. Potential detractors of period instruments in Mozart, who might opine that a lived-in interpretation must belong to our own period and not some past era, ought to realise that their argument can, ironically, be used to contradict them: one now hears more and more performances of eighteenth-century music on ‘old’ instruments, and fewer and fewer on ‘modern’ ones. The result is that it is above all the ‘neo-Classical’ performances which are truly of our time, while the ‘neo-Romantic’ approach is beginning to belong to the past”. René Jacobs

 

Harmonia Mundi HMC901818-20