In 2020 director Joe Hill-Gibbins did not have much luck with his new staging of Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro for English National Opera. Premiering on 14 March of that year, it was set to run until 20 April, but enjoyed no more than its first performance after COVID-19 saw all UK theatres close the following week and a formal lockdown declared on 23 March. What is technically therefore the production’s first revival at the Coliseum is in reality the first time it will...

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 Beaurmarchais’ 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...