Volume 22, Number 21 & 22 · January 22, 1976
'Figaro' at the Met: A Marriage on the Rocks
By Robert Craft
Le Nozze di Figaro
by W.A. Mozart, by Lorenzo da Ponte. The Metropolitan Opera, directed by Günther Rennert, designed by Robert O'Hearn, and conducted by Steuart Bedford
This epigraph from Flaubert's lexicon would surely mystify most of the audience for the new Nozze di Figaro at the Metropolitan. Although the reference is to Beaumarchais's play, in which the consequences of prerevolutionary social structure are more accentuated than they are in the opera, the relationship between the classes is an indispensable element in the latter also. Traditional stagings recognize this, but the current one at Lincoln Center minimizes the historical circumstances. Günther Rennert, who directed the new version, believes that
Review, 3303 words
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