The da Ponte operas of Mozart are full of inexhaustible treasures - speaking afresh to every generation of music lovers, almost as if they had just been written. These works contain the full richness of the human condition - its pains, delights, truths and profound ambiguities captured in music so perfect that it seems to have been dictated from heaven itself.
This production by Neil Armfield is animated by an awareness of the depth and detail of the characters who form a spectrum of shifting relationships, acutely realised in individual moments yet finally revealing a complex landscape of feelings which becomes a mirror in which we see reflected our own experience of life’s joys and sorrows.
Figaro is one of the treasures of our civilization - it is a piece which represents the continuity of the human family and contains one of the greatest moments in the literature - when the countess forgives the count for his bad behaviour which has hurt her feelings so deeply. This gesture is an emblem of salvation and hope, and Mozart’s living testimony to the necessity of spiritual generosity in human life, which speaks eloquently to all time.