Le Nozze di Figaro
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart



World premiere: Burgtheater, Vienna, 1786. A profoundly humane comedy, Le Nozze di Figaro is a remarkable marriage of Mozart’s music at the height of his genius and one of the best librettos ever set. In adapting a play that caused a scandal with its revolutionary take on 18th-century society, librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte focused less on the original topical references and more on the timeless issues embedded in the frothy drawing-room comedy.

Seville, the setting of Figaro and its prequel, The Barber of Seville, was famous in Mozart’s time as a place filled with hot-blooded young men and exotically beautiful women sequestered behind latticed windows, or “jalousies” (which gave us our English word “jealousy”). The current Met production of Le Nozze di Figaro places the action in the 1930s.

Figaro’s amazing score mirrors the complex world it depicts. The first impression is one of tremendous beauty and elegance. Dig a little deeper, and you’ll find all the underlying pain and deception, with a constant tension between the social classes and the sexes, where each character has something to gain and something to hide.



Start time: 10:00am on Capital Public Radio.
Approximate running time 3 hrs 30 min


Click in the "LINKS" area for more information on the Met website about Le Nozze di Figaro including cast, synopsis, history and more.