Bolshoi will present Le Nozze Di Figaro next week. Performances run 29 September - 3 October.
Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte after the play by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.
Music Director: William Lacey
Stage Director: Evgeny Pisarev
Set Designer: Zinovy Margolin
Costume Designer: Viktoria Sevryukova
Lighting Designer: Damir Ismagilov
Choreographer: Alberts Alberts
Chorus Master: Valery Borisov
Learn more at https://2011.bolshoi.ru/en/performances/810/.
It seems that while creating Le Nozze di Figaro (English title is The Marriage of Figaro) Mozart and his famous librettist Da Ponte derived formula of a perfect comic opera. You can observe dashingly twisted intrigue with dramatically evolving action, incredibly charming characters, and constant change of clothes... Le Nozze is overflowed with joyful elements of game and carnival; at the same time it has both shrill lyrical moments and profound drama. This opera is loved by singers and conductors (not mentioning music lovers around the world). It is very alluring for directors too: like a complex maze, not easy to calculate the move, but extremely entertaining.
It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. Mozart's friend,
Michael Kelly, recalled: "Nobody ever had that tremendous amount of success as Mozart with his Le Nozze di Figaro. Theatre was full; many numbers had to be repeated so it took twice longer to perform than it was supposed to be. Audience wouldn't stop applauses to Mozart and called encore" . Emperor even had to issue a special direction: to play an encore only certain pieces instead of the entire numbers.
Next year opera premiered in Prague followed by the same phenomenal success. "Everyone talks nothing else but Figaro here; they play nothing, praise, whistle, sing nothing but Figaro, listen to no other operas but Figaro" (extract from Mozart's letter). This is how triumphal procession of Figaro began around the world.
It dropped by The Bolshoi Theatre, though, with inconceivable and unforgiving delay - first production took place only in 1926! Work was directed by Andrey Petrovsky and conducted by maestro Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov. Altogether it was staged at the Bolshoi four times. Groundbreaking record holder was the production by Boris Pokrovsky that stayed in repertoire over twenty years (1956-1978) - within this period it was performed 291 times.
In 2014 William Lacey and Dmitry Belyanushkin presented a semi-staged production that was well received with enthusiasm by both audience in Moscow and St. Petersburg, and led to conquering heart of Norwegian viewer.
Evegeny Pisarev, famous drama director, was invited to work on the new production for the Bolshoi New Stage. He was well familiar with Figaro and his matrimonial worries. In 2014 he staged Le Nozze di Figaro by Beaumarchais at Pushkin Drama Theatre where he was director at the time. It was a tasteful and gentle play that became a total hit. This was his only second time working on opera theatre - as he was saying before premiere, "many ideas on how to tell the story, but I have to bear in mind that it will be sung".
