And so to the opera. 'The Marriage of Figaro', described by Stendahl as 'a sublime mixture of wit and melancholy which has no equal' was, inevitably perhaps, superb; although I felt as I always do with this work that it went on a bit. Mozart may have been a genius ["May?" enquires the Rhetorical Pedant, er, rhetorically "Mozart
may have been a genius?"], but he needed someone to take him and Da Ponte aside and tell them to drop the fourth act. It was his previous opera that provoked Emperor Joseph II to make his famous comment about there being too many notes, but something similar could be said about this one. As it's an opera it's not supposed to make any sense, but surely the goings on in the garden just detract from what has gone before. I don't believe - plot spoiler alert by the way - that either Figaro would doubt Susannah or the Count and Countess would be reconciled and the wedding (it's really about the 'wedding' of Figaro rather than his 'marriage') has already taken place. And of course an earlier finish wouldn't have caused me to miss my bus.
The set design and staging fully recognise that this is a farce, with plenty of doors and the cast popping in and out of all of them during the overture. The musical highlight for me - and what would have been the winner of the new award that I haven't decided to give out - was Figaro's aria '
Non più andrai' towards the end of the first act, and which has at least some tenuous relevance to wargaming. It's a great tune of course, but maybe it's also the words touching a nerve with this listener:
Non più andrai, farfallone amoroso,
notte e giorno d'intorno girando;
delle belle turbando il riposo
Narcisetto, Adoncino d'amor.
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