Le nozze di Figaro (Georg Solti recording)

Le nozze di Figaro is a 168-minute studio recording of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera of the same name, performed by a cast of singers headed by Sir Thomas Allen, Jane Berbié, Yvonne Kenny, Philip Langridge, Kurt Moll, Lucia Popp, Samuel Ramey, Frederica von Stade, Robert Tear and Dame Kiri Te Kanawa with the London Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Sir Georg Solti.

[1] Upon release of the album, critics highly praised the singing of the cast, especially that of Kiri Te Kanawa, Lucia Popp, Frederica von Stade, and Thomas Allen.

[4] In accordance with the musicological consensus that held sway at the time of its making, the recording follows the traditional ordering of the numbers in the opera's third act, with the Countess's aria "Dove sono" placed after the sextet "Riconosci in questo amplesso".

[1] The cover art shared by the LP, cassette and CD editions of the album is The Gardens of the Villa d'Este at Tivoli by Jean-Honoré Fragonard (1732–1806), a painting in the Wallace Collection, London.

Kiri Te Kanawa, precise in recitatives and a bright golden thread in the tapestry of her ensembles, sang the Countess's music with "her familiarly warm, soft tone unimpaired and a much greater understanding than in the past [of how to achieve] the maximum with the text".

Samuel Ramey's Figaro had a voice more like his master's than was ideal, but was "a formidable rival to the Count", forceful in his resentful defiance, "a servant full of indignation, ... no prancing barber but an incipient revolutionary".

But there was also much pleasure to be had from Kurt Moll's immaculate, "rollicking" Bartolo and Robert Tear's serpentine Basilio – a performance so elaborately crafted that even the character's tedious act 4 aria became interesting.

Georg Solti took recitatives faster than was dramatically realistic, and drove most of the opera forward at a "peremptory" pace that added to the excitement of its finales but subtracted from its warmth elsewhere.

Thomas Allen took Jellinek by surprise: as well as presenting the Count with the "right kind of imperious elegance", he brought a vocal weight to the role which the critic had imagined to be beyond his resources.

Kurt Moll's Bartolo was sung with "remarkable sonority" but unimaginatively, and Robert Tear's rather nasal voice, while good at conveying Basilio's oiliness, was not very pleasant to listen to.

Thomas Allen's Count had "plenty of amorous honey" in his voice, and the tone of Samuel Ramey's Figaro had commendable "firmness and body" from his lowest notes to his highest.

Kiri Te Kanawa's Countess was "meltingly beautiful", Yvonne Kenny's Barbarina "touchingly worried" in her search for her lost pin, Thomas Allen "quite simply superb" as the Count and Samuel Ramey "round-toned" and "forceful" as Figaro.

Maria Anna, Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce in 1780
Lorenzo da Ponte painted by Samuel Morse, circa 1830
Sir Georg Solti photographed by Allen Warren in 1975
Dame Kiri Te Kanawa