October 1 & 7, 2005, 7:30pm
October 9, 2005, 2:00pm
The Valentine Theatre
Sung
in Italian with
projected English translations
3 hours, 15 minutes
including two intermissions
Generously sponsored by
Fifth Third Bank
|
 Le
nozze di Figaro written in 1786, was
Mozart’s first mature
comic opera. It was also the first of his three major collaborations
with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte. Mozart and da Ponte based
their opera on a recent play by the French playwright Pierre-Augustin
Caron de Beaumarchias, La folle jounée ou Le marriage
de Figaro (written in 1781, and performed in 1784). Beaumarchais’s
plays were fast-moving comedies about clever servants who outwitted
the nobility. You’ve all heard Mozart’s Figaro singing
behind Count Almaviva’s back: “You may go dancing,
but I'll play the tune.”
These were revolutionary thoughts! But Mozart’s mind is really
in another place.
In the last act in the famous garden, six characters meet in a terribly convoluted
plot of mistaken identity. Count Almaviva is finally unmasked as a philanderer,
trying to seduce Figaro’s fiancee. The scene ends as Almaviva seeks and
gains the Countess’s forgiveness. He transforms a farce about revolution
into a great celebration of reconciliation. He does it all in a wondrously complex
sextet that defies gravity and lifts us above farce and venality. By musical
means alone, he leads us to the finest of all human acts – to forgiveness. |
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