Customer Reviews

Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro

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This is an early stereo (1955) recording from the Glyndebourne Festival, justly famous for being warm and effervescent, with a Figaro who is laughing and toelrant rather than the current mode of making him combative and resentful. Gui's pacing is fairly leissurely by period-style standards, and the voices often sound too mature for their roles, but it would be hard to name another performance that shows so many sides of Mozart's style, its elegance and wit, pathos and human understanding. Since every cast member is outstanding, it's worthwhile to give the whole list:


Graziella Sciutti sop Susanna ; Sena Jurinac sop Countess Almaviva ; Monica Sinclair sop Marcellina ; Jeannette Sinclair sop Barbarina ; Risė Stevens mez Cherubino ; Hugues Cuénod ten Don Basilio ; Daniel McCoshan ten Don Curzio ; Franco Calabrese bar Count Almaviva ; Sesto Bruscantini bass Figaro ; Ian Wallace bass Bartolo ; Gwyn Griffiths bass Antonio.

EMI has given us an incredible bargain by fitting 158 min. of music on to a budget two-fer, eliminating only two superfluous arias for Basilio and Marcellina in the last act. A small price to pay for a wonderful hisotrical document that should never go out of the catalog. No libretto, by the way.

When it was first issued in 1956, this was the first stereo recording of the complete Figaro opera. It remains the best today. Vittorio Gui conducts an ensemble that mixes freshness and lightness with complete professionalism. Sena Jurinac and Rise Stevens are well-nigh perfect in their respective roles. (How the heck did Met Opera star and New Yorker Stevens get into this European cast I wonder? No matter, picking her was a good move on the part of the producers.) It may be true that a few minutes of the original recording have been cut to fit everything onto two CDs, but that's no reason to pass up such a great performance, beautifully recorded in realistic three-channel sound that stands up well after 50+ years.