Le Nozze di Figaro - Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart / Véronique Gens, Patrizia Ciofi, Angelika Kirchschlager, Lorenzo Regazzo, Simon Keenlyside, Concerto Köln, René Jacobs / Harmonia Mundi 3x Audio CD 2004 / HMC 801818.20

UPC 794881735761 

René Jacobs has done it again. Following on the heels of his superb Cosi fan tutte, he now offers a Nozze di Figaro which is alive and vibrant; it seems to be happening in real time. There's so little artifice in the characters' recitatives and the rhythm is so conversational that we get the impression of real people, in a real pickle of a situation. The singing/acting is stunning, with Simon Keenlyside's Count the best on CD (a dangerous man just in control of his anger), Veronique Gens' Countess girlish and womanly in equal measure, the Cherubino of Angelika Kirchschlager extraordinarily well sung and properly boyish, Patrizia Ciofi's Susanna witty and wise and Lorenzo Regazzo's Figaro slightly darker than others, but all the more interesting for it. Throughout, the pianoforte not only accompanies but acts as commentator on the action. I don't find it intrusive but some might. Jacobs' instrumentalists play with real energy and brightness. This is a performance which feels as if it's being seen as well as heard. Just grand.       --Robert Levine

The Marriage of Figaro (Italian: Le nozze di Figaro, pronounced [le ˈnɔttse di ˈfiːɡaro]), K. 492, is an opera buffa (comic opera) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on the 1784 stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"). It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.

Considered one of the greatest operas ever written it is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. In 2017, BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. The Marriage of Figaro came in at No. 1 out of the 20 operas featured, with the magazine describing the work as being "one of the supreme masterpieces of operatic comedy, whose rich sense of humanity shines out of Mozart’s miraculous score".