SYNOPSIS

In a gesture of solidarity with Enlightenment ideals, Count Almaviva has abolished the “ius primae noctis” but would none the less like to seduce the Countess’s chambermaid, Susanna, before her wedding to his steward, Figaro.

CD 1

[1] Sinfonia

Act One

[2] On the day of the planned wedding, Figaro measures up the room that he and Susanna have been allocated between the private apartments of the Count and Countess. Figaro praises the room’s convenient location, but Susanna enlightens him as to the Count’s true intentions: in Figaro’s absence she will be virtually at the mercy of the Count. Figaro vows that he will thwart Alniaviva’s dastardly designs.

[7] The Count’s plot to upset Figaro’s marriage plans is aided and abetted by his housekeeper, Marcellina, who is anxious to assert her claim to Figaro’s hand following the latter’s long standing promise to marry her if he cannot repay the money she lent him. [8] The shady figure of Dr. Bartolo is the third member of this cabal. He too hopes to be avenged on Figaro and thus to requite the latter’s services in abducting Rosina, formerly his ward of court and now the Count’s wife, even though these events took place in the distant past.

[11] The page-boy, Cherubino, is the darling of all the women in the castle. He in turn reveres them. He now begs Susanna to intercede with the Countess, since on the previous day the Count had caught him flirting with Susanna’s cousin, Barbarina, and dismissed him from his service. [13] Suddenly the Count himself enters the room. Cherubino dives behind an armchair and involuntarily overhears Almaviva’s importunate advances. When the voice of the music master, Basilio — a further figure of intrigue — , is heard outside the room, Cherubino changes his place of hiding and crouches down in the armchair, where Susanna covers him with a sheet, while the unsuspecting Count slips behind the chair. Basilio teases Susanna over the page’s infatuation for the Countess and in so doing rouses the Count to jealousy. [15] So enraged is he that he finally emerges from his hiding-place and orders Cherubino to be thrown out of the castle. Susanna and Basilio beg him to show mercy. In order to show them how he discovered Cherubino, hiding at Barbarina’s, he lifts the sheet from die chair and, to his surprise, discovers the page there, too. In reply to his furious questioning, he is forced to realize that Cherubino was hidden in the room the whole time and that he must have overheard his amorous proposals to Susanna.

[16] Led by Figaro, a rustic chorus enters to hymn the Count’s magnanimity in renouncing his “droit de seigneur” and to ask for a date to be set for Figaro’s wedding. Almaviva is no fool and, like the others, grasps the ironical subtext to this “démarche”. [17] He asks for a brief delay, during which time he hopes to set in motion his own counter-ruse with Marcellina. [20] Cherubino is banished with a commission to serve in the Count’s private regiment but Figaro detains him, whispering into his ear that there are things they must first discuss.

Act Two

[21] Figaro is planning a double intrigue. Basilio is to hand the Count a letter informing him of an affair that the Countess is allegedly conducting. At the same time, Susanna has been instructed to agree to an assignation with the Count in the garden that evening. Cherubino will attend in her place, dressed in women’s clothes, thus allowing the Countess to catch her husband “in flagrante delicto” and expose him for what he is.

CD 2

[1] Susanna and the Countess are busy dressing up the page when Almaviva unexpectedly knocks at the door of the Countess’s boudoir. Cherubino hides in the closet and bolts the door from within, while the Countess herself takes the key from the outside. By the time that the Countess finally opens the main door to admit her husband, Susanna too has slipped away to her own room. The Countess attributes the long delay to the fact that Susanna was in the middle of trying on her wedding dress and had needed time to withdraw. [3] A stool is heard falling over in the closet and the Count demands to know who it is. Susanna, the Countess replies. The Count invites her to answer him through the closed door, but the Countess, claiming that her honour is at stake, bids her say nothing. His suspicions aroused, the Count decides to break down the closet door by force and invites his wife to accompany him in his search for the requisite blunt instrument. [6] The Count and Countess leave, whereupon Susanna, who has slipped back into the room unnoticed, emerges from her hiding-place and summons the page from the closet. Since the Count has locked all the outside doors, his only means of escape is to jump through the window. [7] Susanna now replaces him in the Countess’s closet.

[8] The Count and Countess return. [9] When Almaviva threatens to break down the door, the Countess is panicked into admitting that it is Cherubino hiding behind it. [10] But it is Susanna who now emerges, much to the Almavivas’ confusion and consternation. The Countess skilfully conceals her surprise, while the Count sees himself obliged to beg his wife’s forgiveness, which he does with a bad grace. The contents of Basilio’s letter and the page’s disguise are passed off by both women as pure inventions designed to excite his jealousy.

[12] Figaro, now bursts in and makes another at, tempt to catch the Count off guard by announcing the arrival of the musicians for the wedding. But the Count tries to corner him by producing the letter and demanding to know more details about it, even though the women have already explained all about it. Figaro, pretends to know nothing and looks set to wriggle out of this latest predicament, [13] when the drunken gardener, Antonio, staggers in to complain that the residents of the castle have now taken to throwing people out of the windows in addition to the thousand and one other objects they have regularly thrown out in the past. As a result, his prize carnations have been ruined. When Antortio mentions the name of Cherubino, Figaro claims that it was he who jumped out of the window. Antonio is on the point of returning the papers which Cherubino dropped among the carnations, but the Count snatches them up in triumph and demands that Figaro explain their contents. Peering over the Count’s shoulder, the women recognize the page’s commission and whisper the required information to Figaro, who, boldly and brazenly, is able to answer all the Count’s questions.

[14] But Figaro’s triumph, like that of the two women, is short-lived as the opposing party now enters in the persons of Marcellina, Bartolo and Basilio, who demand that the Count takes legal advice on the validity of Figaro’s promise to marry Marcellina. The wedding is once again postponed.

Act Three

[15] Since Figaro’s intrigues have failed to produce results, the Countess and Susanna now hatch a plot of their own to expose Alinaviva. Instead of Cherubino, the Countess herself will dress up as Susanna and attend the nocturnal tryst with the Count, a change of plan calculated to be even more shaming for the latter. Susanna will then arrive dressed as the Countess and catch them out. [16] Susanna seeks out the Count and arranges an assignation with him.

[20] In the meantime the court case has taken an unexpected turn, for although the judge had ruled that Figaro, must either pay Marcellina or marry her, Marcellina has recognized her longlost son in him. And Bartolo has turned out to be Figaro’s father. When the unsuspecting Susanna arrives to pay Figaro’s debt for him, she finds him in Marcellina’s arms and, assuming him to he unfaithful, boxes his ears but is quickly enlightened as to the new relationship. [21] Meanwhile, Barbarina has dressed Cherubino in girls’ clothes so that he can remain in the castle undetected. When Antonio unmasks him in the presence of both the Count and Countess, Barbarina reminds Alinaviva that he had once promised to give her anything she wanted in return for her favours: [22] she asks for Cherubino’s hand in marriage.

CD 3

[2]-[4] The Countess dictates a “billet-doux” to the Count, describing the place where he is to meet Susanna, and seals the letter with a pin, which is to he returned to the sender as a sign of agreement. [7] At the following wedding ceremony, Susanna slips the letter to the Count. After reading it, the Count postpones the reception to later that same evening.

Act Four

[8] Barbarina has lost the pin which the Count had instructed her to return to Susanna. [9] When Figaro arrives, she innocently explains what she was doing with it, thereby rousing Figaro’s jealousy, since he has not been initiated into this latest intrigue. He fulminates bitterly against women’s infidelity, just as Marcellina had earlier vented her own anger on men’s wicked ways.

[13]-[14] Figaro tells Basilio and Bartolo about Susanna’s planned meeting with the Count, but Basilio considers Figaro’s jealousy misplaced. [16] Susanna, too, discovers from Marcellina that his jealousy has been fired by Barbarina’s indiscretion and that he is hiding nearby. Susanna has already changed clothes with the Countess and, audible only to her hidden fiancé, now sings a love-song addressed — were he only to know it — to Figaro himself.

[18] With the unexpected arrival of the page, Cherubino, a scene of unholy confusion now unfolds in the Count’s night-shrouded park, in the course of which Almaviva makes passionate love to his own wife, while Figaro recognizes the false Countess by her voice but, pretending not to know who she is, sings her praises and receives a series of resounding blows about the head for his pains. He and Susanna then exchange roles and, in order to provoke Almaviva, play out an ardent love scene, inciting the fury of the Count, for whom extra-marital affairs are all very well in his own case but distinctly “de trop” in his wife’s.

Finally, and in the presence of all concerned, the Count is shamed into admitting that he was attempting to seduce his own wife. He acknowledges defeat and formally begs the Countess for forgiveness, which she duly grants him. Figaro’s wedding night can go ahead at last.

Attila Csampai
Translation: © 1994 Stewart Spencer

Editorial note

The present recording of Le nozze di Figaro includes, by way of an appendix, a variant of the Count’s aria “Vedrò mentre to sospiro” (No. 18, Act Three; [CD 3 [24]]). This alternative version derives from a manuscript lodged in the library of the “Conservatorio Luigi Cherubini” in Florence and reproduces the standard version of the introductory recitative and the first part of the aria as far as bar 54. From bar 55, however, the tessitura of the vocal writing is appreciably higher and demands a greater degree of virtuosity on the part of the singer performing the role. The orchestral accompaniment, too, has been subjected to a number of modifications in a handful of passages.

This variant of the Count’s aria was written for the 1789 revival of the opera in Vienna, when a number of roles, including that of the Count, now sung by Francesco Albertarelli, were entrusted to singers different from those who had appeared in the première three years previously. Whether this version of the aria is in fact by Mozart himself has yet to be convincingly proved. The Neue Mozart-Ausgabe, on which the present complete recording is based, ignores it, and in preparing the present performance Zubin Mehta has used Alan Tyson’s edition of the Florence manuscript.