Mozart - Le Nozze di Figaro - Spagnoli, Dasch - JacobsPerformer: Enrico Facini, Antonio Abete, Angelika Kirchschlager, Pietro Spagnoli, Annette Dasch, Rosemary Joshua, Alessandro Svab, Serge Goubioud, Sophie Pondjiclis
Conductor: René Jacobs
Orchestra/Ensemble: Concerto Cologne (period instruments)
René Jacobs’s performances of Le nozze di Figaro at the Théâtre des Champs Élysées took place some 15 months after the Harmonia Mundi studio recording, a set lavishly praised in Fanfare 28:1 by Bernard Jacobson (“may well stand alongside the famous Callas/de Sabata Tosca as the greatest realization of an opera ever put on disc”), and me, although James Camner advanced an alternative view. For the stage production, Jacobs had a cast in which only Angelika Kirchschlager’s sensual Cherubino and Antonio Abete’s splendid Bartolo retain the parts played in the audio recording. Texturally there is no variation, which means we get the arias of Marcellina, and Basilio in act IV, often criticized for holding up the action, but convincingly defended by Jacobs in the booklet of the HM set (an abridged version of his comments is reproduced in BelAir’s well-produced booklet) as crucial to Mozart and da Ponte’s structure.
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