“Sull’aria… che soave zeffiretto” from Le nozze di Figaro

Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
Music: Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto: Lorenzo da Ponte

Renée Fleming, soprano
Julia Bullock, soprano
Doug Peck, music director

 

Premiered in Prague in 1786, Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) is one of the most musically satisfying and emotionally accessible operas ever written. Mozart (1756-1791) collaborated with a brilliant librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte (1749-1838), with whom he shared a profound understanding of human nature that revealed itself in every page of the score. The two combined their gifts in adapting Les noces de Figaro, the play by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais that had excited all of pre-Revolutionary Paris with his presentation of a servant’s rebellious attitude toward the aristocracy. 

One of the opera’s most endearing scenes begins with Countess Almaviva asking her maid, Susanna, to take down some dictation. The resulting note is to be given to Count Almaviva, the Countess’s philandering husband—it’s an invitation for a rendezvous that evening in their castle’s garden. The Count, who has designs on Susanna, will be expecting her to appear, but instead it will be the Countess! She dictates an atmospheric description of the night scene for the upcoming tryst, with Susanna sweetly echoing each phrase.

Soprano

Renée Fleming

Renée Fleming

Previously at Lyric: Ten roles since1993|94, most recently Hanna Glawari|The Merry Widow(2015|16); CountessMadeleine/Capriccio(2014|15); eight gala concerts;duo recital with Susan Graham.

Renée Fleming, Lyric’s special projects advisor and formerly its first creative consultant, is one of the most beloved and celebrated singers of our time. Winner of the National Medal of Arts (awarded by President Obama at the White House in 2013) and a four-time Grammy® Award winner, Fleming brought her voice to a vast new audience in 2014 as the first classical artist to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the Super Bowl. She has performed at distinguished occasions worldwide, from Oslo’s Nobel Peace Prize ceremony to the balcony of Buckingham Palace for the Diamond Jubilee Concert for HM Queen Elizabeth II. A groundbreaking distinction came in 2008 when Fleming became the first woman to solo-headline a Metropolitan Opera opening-night gala. Recent achievements include Nettie Fowler/Carousel (Broadway musical debut, Tony Award® nomination); Margaret Johnson/The Light in the Piazza (London, Los Angeles, Chicago); title role/Norma Jeane Baker of Troy (opening of New York City’s newest arts space, The Shed); a virtual solo recital for the Met at Washington’s Dumbarton Oaks; and the latest addition to her extensive discography, a program of songs by Schumann, Brahms, and Mahler.

Soprano

Julia Bullock

Julia Bullock

Lyric debut

The American soprano, one of the most acclaimed and sought-after artists of her generation, is currently artist-in-residence at the San Francisco Symphony and at London’s Guildhall School of Music & Drama. She previously served in the same capacity at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Her artistry has graced numerous world premieres, including creating three roles in Terence Blanchard’s Fire Shut Up in My Bones (Opera Theatre of Saint Louis) and portraying Dame Shirley in John Adams’s Girls of the Golden West (San Francisco Opera, reprised at the Dutch National Opera in Amsterdam). Among Bullock’s other important operatic engagements have been Kitty Oppenheimer/Doctor Atomic (Santa Fe Opera), Anne Trulove/The Rake’s Progress (Aix-en-Provence, Amsterdam), and Purcell’s The Indian  Queen as Doña Luisa(London, Madrid, Perm, Moscow).  She has appeared with the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the leading orchestras of Los Angeles, Milwaukee, Boston, and Berlin. Her highly praised appearances in recital have included performances at the Kennedy Center, Carnegie Hall, Boston’s Celebrity Series, and the Philadelphia Chamber Music Society, among many other distinguished venues.