Name: Le nozze di Figaro
Start: 2017-08-06T00:00:00.000Z
End: 2017-08-06T00:00:00.000Z
Location: Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre

Organization

Conductor

Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider

Valery Gergiev

Baritone

Vladimir Moroz

The Count of Almaviva

Bass

Dmitrii Grigorev

Bartolo

Soprano

Anastasia Kalagina

The Countess of Almaviva

Violetta Lukyanenko

Susanna

Irina Kolodyazhnaya

Marcelline

Mezzo-soprano

Yekaterina Sergeyeva

Cherubino

Others

The Mariinsky Chorus

Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre

Italian

Le nozze di Figaro -  (The Marriage of Figaro)

Vladivostok

Russia

Big Hall

Le nozze di Figaro

Public

The Marriage of Figaro

Russian

Approved

“I have just returned from the Opera Comique, where I heard Le nozze di Figaro for the second time, and if they perform it again, then I will go again, and again, and again! My God, how divinely good the music is…”
P.I. Tchaikovsky

In his Memoirs, the librettist and dramatist Lorenzo Da Ponte, telling of his meetings and conversations with Mozart, recalled that it was Mozart who originally suggested the idea of their collaboration on a new opera based on a notorious Beaumarchais’s comedy La folle journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro. Beaumarchais’s play was staged in Paris in 1784 and opened to a sensational success, however it was soon banned everywhere. Rehearsals of Le Mariage de Figaro in Vienna in the German translation by Emanuel Schikaneder were also stopped.

Mozart and Da Ponte worked on the opera in total secrecy, telling no-one. When the opera was complete, Lorenzo Da Ponte went with it to the Emperor and it took him all his ingenious charm and eloquence to convince Joseph II that the opera was absolutely politically harmless and all its content revolved around a family conflict between the Count and the Countess, while the music abounded in all sorts of merits. Having listened to several excerpts from Le nozze di Figaro (that was the new title of the opera), the Emperor authorized its rehearsals in the Vienna Burgtheater. At the very first meeting between Mozart and the orchestra, when Francesco Benucci was coming to the end of Figaro’s aria “Non più andrai”, farfallone amoroso..” (You won't go any more, amorous butterfly…”), singing it with all the power of his rich baritone, the whole of the performers on the stage and those in the orchestra, as if actuated by one feeling of delight, vociferated 'Bravo! bravo! maestro.!” All other rehearsals retained that high-spirited atmosphere and the artists and musicians kept calling out: ”Viva! viva grande Mozart!”. The opera conducted by the composer himself premiered to an equally eсstatic receipt on 1 May 1786. In its first year, the number of performances of Le nozze di Figaro could well match that of popular Italian operas, which was unheard of at that time. However, Mozart’s enemies somehow succeeded in getting the opera removed from the repertoire. The subsequent Prague production of the opera in December 1786, seven months after its premiere in Vienna, was a triumphant success. It was at that moment that the eternal life of Le nozze di Figaro began. The opera has been staged and restaged an endless number of times by almost all musical theatres all over the world. In Russia, it was first performed in 1815 by the St Petersburg German Opera Company. In Russian (in the timeless translation by the Great Russian composer P.I. Tchaikovsky, who adored this work) Le nozze di Figaro was first performed in Moscow on 5 May, 1876 by the Conservatory students. In St Petersburg the opera was first staged by O. Palechek at the Mariinsky Theatre on 25 September, 1901 (featuring (V. Kastorsky as Almaviva, M. Cherkasskaya as the Countess, M. Mikhailova as Susanna, D. Bukhtoyarov as Figaro, S. Gladkaya as Cherubino and N. Fride as Marcellina). The next time Le nozze di Figaro was heard at the Mariinsky Theatre almost a century later – on 5 April, 1994.

English

The Marriage of Figaro by Mozart, From (2017/2017), Conductor Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider, Valery Gergiev, Primorsky Stage of the Mariinsky Theatre, Vladivostok, Russia

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Ensemble

Programme, About & Synopsis

Photos

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues