Glyndebourne – The Marriage of Figaro

If you want to dance, Count, I’ll play the tune.

One wedding; one marriage on the rocks; one scheme; one day.

When a womanising aristocrat tries to seduce his valet’s pretty young fiancée, his wife and servants conspire to teach him a lesson in fidelity he’ll never forget. Plots are hatched, promises made (and broken) and disguises donned, as Mozart’s ‘mad day’ unfolds.

A revolutionary comedy in every sense, Mozart and Da Ponte’s adaptation of Beaumarchais’ banned 1778 play about warring masters and servants takes a topical satire and broadens it into a deeply human drama. The battle between both classes and sexes remains sharply bladed, but the characters themselves are rounded by some of Mozart’s most sparkling music into feeling, fallible and all too familiar personalities.

Director Michael Grandage updates the action to the dying days of Spain’s Franco regime in his 2012 production.