Location: Covent Garden Theatre

Type of production: Opera

Opened: 31 May 2010

Booking until: 03 July 2010

Running time: 3hrs 30mins

Author/Playwright: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Synopsis:

Melodious and moving, Mozart’s operatic masterpiece Le nozze di Figaro is always an audience favourite. It returns to The Royal Opera in a welcome revival of the acclaimed production by David McVicar that sets the story in the late 1820s to reveal with truth and wit the simmering tensions between master and servants. The symptoms of revolution are never far away. There is a world-class cast of performers alternating in the roles, and expert Mozartian Colin Davis shares the conducting with David Syrus. Erwin Schrott will once again excel as the cunning servant Figaro – in such enlightened times if the Count wishes to dance, then Figaro will make sure it is to his tune and not his master’s.

Mozart’s music makes this one of the finest jewels in the opera repertory, with a wealth of famous melodies that start from the familiar first notes of the energetic Overture. There is Cherubino’s breathless infatuation in ‘Non so più cosa son’ and the playfulness of Figaro in ‘Non più andrai’ as he sends him off to war, but there is also the genuine despair of the Countess at her husband’s infidelity, revealed in ‘Porgi, amor’ and ‘Dove sono’. All shades of emotion are portrayed through the solos, duets and ensembles, bringing a Mozart masterpiece to full musical and dramatic life.