Yannick Nézet-Séguin is the music director of the Philadelphia Orchestra—and is slated to be the music director of the Metropolitan Opera. He assumes the post in 2020. So, when he conducts opera, we in New York have some local interest.
Actually, everyone has an interest—everyone interested in opera, that is.
Nézet-Séguin is the conductor on a new recording of The Marriage of Figaro, by Mozart. He leads the Chamber Orchestra of Europe et al. This recording was made in Baden-Baden in July 2015. Is it a live performance? If so, is it a staged performance or a concert performance? Is it a studio recording?
I don’t know. From the CD booklet, it is impossible to tell. There is a picture of some of the cast in front of the orchestra. The women are wearing gowns. They would be unlikely to wear such duds to the studio. This is likely a concert performance.
And yet there are stage-production noises—crashes and whatnot—in this recording. When or how were those put in?
Anyway, I’ll move on.
Like you, perhaps, I have heard Nézet-Séguin conduct very well, both in symphonic music and in opera. But I have also heard him conduct less than well. In particular, I have heard him exhibit an Energizer Bunny problem—with the music too fast, too frenetic, almost computer-like.
This had me worried about the overture to The Marriage of Figaro—which is often abused with ridiculous, unmusical speed. Nézet-Séguin takes it very fast, yes. But it is bearable. A little fast, a little punchy, a little scrappy. But within bounds.
I don’t understand why conductors don’t want to enjoy this music. It is so wonderful. They want to race through it, heedlessly. They want to get it over with.
They want to do the same with an aria in Don Giovanni, too: the Champagne Aria. I have not heard this aria in years. I mean, I have heard conductors, orchestras, and singers crash through it—with the notes and words barely hinted at. But I have not truly heard Mozart’s aria.
Why don’t they want to conduct, play, and sing it? It’s so wonderful.
In the Nézet-Séguin Figaro, “Non so più” is very fast. (This is one of Cherubino’s arias.) I wish people could know that it’s possible to convey impetuosity without going nuts.
Regardless, Nézet-Séguin does a reasonable job with the opera. He shows some deftness and grace. He allows some lilt. He favors the fast and punchy—but he is not the Energizer Bunny.
Act II is one of the most magical things ever written—especially in its latter half—and it is not fully magical here. But it’s good. The Wedding March does not have the screwiness—the wonderful, ingenious screwiness—that it can have. But it’s fine.
Nézet-Séguin, as I say, does a reasonable job. Now let’s glance at some of the cast.
The title role is taken by Luca Pisaroni, the Italian bass-baritone. As usual, he is “streamlined,” as I like to say. He is lean, pliant, smooth, accurate, and personable. He is well-nigh instrumental (no offense to singers). He is almost an ideal Mozartean in opera.
Count Almaviva is his father-in-law, his real-life father-in-law: Thomas Hampson, the baritone from Spokane. A veteran and canny performer.
The Countess is Sonya Yoncheva, the Bulgarian soprano. Her “Porgi, amor” is not the prettiest thing. But it is such a hard aria—all of those long breaths—and Yoncheva is adequate in it. In another aria, “Dove sono,” she is downright stylish.
Christiane Karg, the German soprano, is Susanna, and she sings beautifully. Often, Susannas are spunky. And overly spunky. This one comports herself with beauty and poise. Cherubino is Angela Brower, the American mezzo (whom I recently reviewed from the Salzburg Festival, here). She fills her trouser-wearing bill.
Anne Sofie von Otter, the great Swedish mezzo, is Marcellina. It happens to them all, right? They all become Marcellina. One moment, they are bestriding the world like a mezzo colossus, and the next moment they’re Marcellina. Frankly, it makes me a little sad. But evidently they’re not sad. And if they’re not, who am I to be sad?
In any event, Anne Sofie von Otter is still herself. Older, but herself. She dispatches Marcellina’s music in utterly Otteresque fashion.
That little F-minor aria, for Barbarina, comes out of nowhere. It is absolutely startling. How did it occur to Mozart? It did. Lots of things occurred to Mozart. On this recording, Barbarina is Regula Mühlemann, a Swiss soprano, and she handles the aria decently.
What an astonishing piece, The Marriage of Figaro. You listen to it, and you think, “That aria is in there? This one is in there? All these others? How did Mozart pack all of this immortal and perfect music into one opera?” I will relate two stories, both stemming from interviews.
Years ago, I interviewed a concertmaster of the Vienna Philharmonic, Werner Hink. He said he had played The Marriage of Figaro over 500 times—and never tired of it.
Earlier this year, I interviewed Riccardo Muti, the Italian conductor. He said—at my prompting—that Così fan tutte is problematic, in Act II. But The Marriage of Figaro? “Perfect from first note to last.”
I always thought that Figaro peaked at the end of Act II. But I’ll give Muti, and of course Mozart, an amen.