Detroit Symphony Cadenza Conversations: James Gaffigan and Soprano Isabel Leonard

This is really not how Figaro and Susanna imagined the night before their wedding: not only is their new bedchamber right next to the rooms of their employer Count Almaviva, Susanna fears that he might even sneak in a claim to his droit du seigneur. But these are not the only intrigues in the House of Almaviva: old Bartolo seeks revenge against Figaro for thwarting his former plans to marry the Countess himself, the Count’s page Cherubino is threatened with dismissal after the Count caught him with his new flame Barbarina, and last but not least, the neglected Countess Rosina is concocting her own plans to bring her supposedly love-struck husband back in line.

Lovers in closets, leaps into the garden, nocturnal trysts: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has taken the text of his poet familiar Lorenzo Da Ponte and composed a masterpiece with all the ingredients of a perfect romantic comedy. With his breakneck tempo, multilayered emotionality, and playful esprit, Mozart draws us into the innermost hearts of his protagonists, revealing to us a wide-ranging palette of love in its many colours. The Marriage of Figaro, a trailblazer among musical comedies, shines in new and contemporary splendour with director Kirill Serebrennikov’s artful reading.

This is really not how Figaro and Susanna imagined the night before their wedding: not only is their new bedchamber right next to the rooms of their employer Count Almaviva, Susanna fears that he might even sneak in a claim to his droit du seigneur. But these are not the only intrigues in the House of Almaviva: old Bartolo seeks revenge against Figaro for thwarting his former plans to marry the Countess himself, the Count’s page Cherubino is threatened with dismissal after the Count caught him with his new flame Barbarina, and last but not least, the neglected Countess Rosina is concocting her own plans to bring her supposedly love-struck husband back in line.

Lovers in closets, leaps into the garden, nocturnal trysts: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has taken the text of his poet familiar Lorenzo Da Ponte and composed a masterpiece with all the ingredients of a perfect romantic comedy. With his breakneck tempo, multilayered emotionality, and playful esprit, Mozart draws us into the innermost hearts of his protagonists, revealing to us a wide-ranging palette of love in its many colours. The Marriage of Figaro, a trailblazer among musical comedies, shines in new and contemporary splendour with director Kirill Serebrennikov’s artful reading.