Booking Confirmation by email
Ticket pick-up at the evening box office
Run time: 3hrs 30min, 1 intermission
Sung in ITALIAN
Subtitles in English, German, Italian, French, Russian, Japanese, Spanish, Chinese
A new generation of rising stars shines in Jean-Pierre Ponnelle’s landmark production of Mozart’s timeless social comedy. The arrogant Count Almaviva (Andrè Schuen) is no match for his resourceful servant Figaro (Philippe Sly), whose bride-to-be Susanna (Louise Alder) is as manipulative as she is charming. Add in one beautiful, disillusioned Countess (Federica Lombardi) and one irrepressible, testosterone-laden teenage boy (Cherubino, played by Virginie Verrez), and it’s no wonder some critics say this is the perfect opera.
The son of a Salzburg court musician, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–1791) showed prodigious ability from his earliest years. The young Mozart spent much of his childhood touring Europe with his father, performing before nobility. He went on to compose in all musical genres of his day and excelled in every one. Mozart's operas in particular represent the peak of his genius and remain unsurpassed in terms of beauty, vocal challenge and dramatic insight.
The opera is based on the comedy The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 –1799), one of the great self-made men of 18th-century Europe. Trained as a watchmaker, he rose through the ranks of French nobility to become a successful inventor, businessman, publisher and diplomat. Today Beaumarchais is best known, however, for his semi-autobiographical Figaro plays.
The libretto for Le nozze di Figaro was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749–1838), a court poet and librettist in Vienna, who also collaborated with Mozart on his other Italian operas, Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte.