Mozart’s 'Figaro' – a Marriage made in Heaven - four online talks by Ian Page

The Marriage of Figaro is widely considered to be the greatest opera ever written. Composed in 1786, it set to music a highly licentious play by Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais that had been written in pre-revolutionary Paris just eight years previously, and Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte had to promise the Viennese authorities that they were omitting all of the play’s controversial political content. Mozart, however, knew that a story could be told with more than words…

As he prepares for his next production of the opera – which will include a performance at the Teatro Comunale in Siracusa as part of MRT’s ‘Opera in Sicily’ Festival – conductor and Mozart specialist Ian Page presents a listeners’ guide in the form of four talks on the opera, one for each act. Placing the work in the context of Mozart’s own trajectory and the evolution of opera as an art form, the series will focus primarily on the composer’s extraordinary ability to communicate character, subtext, emotion and profound insights into the essence of the human condition.

Each talk will explore the choices that Mozart made in setting Da Ponte’s libretto, his approach to melody and harmony, his knowledge and understanding of the human voice, his use of the orchestra to reflect and underline the narrative, his gift for comedy and his consummate control of the narrative in what has been described as 'this ultimate miracle of composition'.

They take place every Thursday from 5th–26th September at 4.30pm (London) and, including Q&A, will probably last just under an hour. They are available for viewing for eight weeks after the last episode is streamed (21st November 2024).