Le Nozze Di Figaro at Peterborough Players

• Leading an extraordinary cast in Mozart’s period comedy, bass baritone Michael Sumuel stars as the clever valet Figaro, opposite soprano Olga Kulchynska as his betrothed, the wily maid Susanna. Baritone Joshua Hopkins is the skirt-chasing Count, with soprano Federica Lombardi as his anguished wife and mezzo-soprano Marianne Crebassa as the adolescent page Cherubino. Joana Mallwitz conducts.

• Le Nozze di Figaro is a remarkable marriage of Mozart’s music at the height of his genius and one of the best libretti 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.

• Mozart’s amazing score mirrors the complex world it depicts,
balancing impressions of tremendous beauty and elegance, as well as the plot’s themes of underlying pain and deception.