The Marriage of Figaro of 1786 is one of three operas on which Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte (the others being Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte). It is based on the second of Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ trilogy of Figaro plays, while the first was later to be immortalised by Rossini in The Barber of Seville. It centres on the day on which Figaro, valet to Count Almaviva, tries to wed Susanna, maid to the...

It takes a special production to ensure listeners do not get helplessly lost in the messy operatic overgrowth of La finta giardinieria. Written by Mozart at the age of 18, the score possesses little of the trailblazing innovation that would characterise his mature operas. Conventional arias are joined together with tiresome stretches of recitative, in a dreary musical terrain that only occasionally lights up to flashes of musical genius. The story centres on Sandrina, a noblewoman...

Lucio Silla comes back to Milan over than 30 years after its only staging at La Scala. The opera was actually composed in Milan, the Italian city with which the teen-aged Mozart (not yet 17) had established the strongest ties, and where he got very close to being employed at Court. Even if the original opera house no longer exists, as it was replaced by La Scala barely five years after Lucio Silla’s première in December 1772, the present production perfectly renders the flavor...