01 Nov 2010
From day one, The Marriage Of Figaro was a match made in heaven
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music-features/from-day-one-the-marriage-of-figaro-was-a-match-made-in-heaven-1.1065183
https://boydellandbrewer.com/bizet-s-i-carmen-i-uncovered.html
https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-sergei-prokofiev.html
https://www.wexfordopera.com/media/news/incoming-artistic-director-rosetta-cucchi-announces-her-2020-programme
https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/M/bo43988096.html
http://www.iupress.indiana.edu/product_info.php?products_id=809636
https://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/music/twentieth-century-and-contemporary-music/prokofievs-soviet-operas?format=HB
https://boydellandbrewer.com/the-operas-of-benjamin-britten.html
https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/the-opera-singers-acting-toolkit-9781350006454/
https://h-france.net/vol18reviews/vol18no52palidda.pdf
http://www.operatoday.com/content/2018/08/glyndebourne_an.php
A musical challenge to our view of the past
https://vimeo.com/operarara/how-to-rescue-an-opera
http://www.heraldscotland.com/arts-ents/music-features/from-day-one-the-marriage-of-figaro-was-a-match-made-in-heaven-1.1065183
By Conrad Wilson [The Herald, 1 November 2010]
But what was it actually like, that very first performance of The Marriage Of Figaro at Vienna’s Burgtheater in May 1786? Not quite like Scottish Opera’s in Glasgow last night, to be sure. At a time when modern conductors, especially the late lamented Sir Charles Mackerras, have been trying to bring us closer and closer to the composer’s intentions while many modern stage directors have been transporting us further away from them, we cannot help wondering what the original audience really experienced and how much, despite Mackerras’s meticulous attention to detail, it must have differed from a performance today.