Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro (Salzburg Festival live)

One Night That Changed a Summer

In the summer of 2006 — Mozart’s 250th birthday year — the Salzburg Festival decided to perform all 22 of Mozart’s operas in a single season. They called it the “Mozart 22” project. On July 20, Le nozze di Figaro took the stage at the Haus für Mozart in a staging by Claus Guth, and DG caught the whole night through their microphones. By June 2007, it had become a three-CD set.

This is not a dutiful archival document. It is a combination opera lovers had waited for decades to put together: Netrebko’s Susanna meeting Harnoncourt’s historical-performance sharpness — and DG simply let the stage sounds decide everything.

Netrebko’s Susanna: Clever, Mischievous, Honest

In Le nozze di Figaro, Susanna is the servant girl who is the axis of every scheme. Netrebko’s Susanna does not play dumb — she grasps every hint the Count drops, already setting traps with Figaro in the first act, turning “turning the tables” into an art. In the fourth-act garden she sings <Deh vieni, non tardar> from the dark: moonlight, anxiety, and triumph landing in her voice at once — the loneliest and most brilliant moment of the opera.

Close-miked recording catches her breathing, her quick wit, and her intelligence on disc. Some recordings sing to the theatre; this one sings to you alone.

Harnoncourt: The Austere Eye of Historical Performance

At the podium was Nikolaus Harnoncourt, grandfather of the early-music movement — so this is not a syrupy Viennese comedy but an Enlightenment comedy with a blade. Mozart’s music regains its edge in his hands: allegros with rhythmic corners, slow movements with the cold gleam of brass.

Netrebko’s Two Faces of Taiwan

Netrebko has come to Taiwan: on March 25, 2016, the Taipei National Concert Hall, the TIFA Festival, a sold-out house with tenor Yusif Eyvazov at her side.

In 2023, NSO invited her again — but on February 28 of that year, NSO announced it was canceling the invitation, citing “the international situation and public sentiment.” The war turned the distance between Russian musicians and the Taiwanese stage into an unignorable cold light.

Further Listening

If you love your Mozart authentic, Harnoncourt actually recorded Figaro twice: the 1993 Teldec set is where his experiment began, and this 2006 Salzburg edition is its mature arrival — hear them side by side and you will find Mozart is always younger than you think. And if you want to hear Netrebko’s other side, her aria album Souvenirs is another door into her vocal garden.