DVD + Blu-Ray:
Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro - Nikolaus Harnoncourt

“He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: we “had never before heard like this”.

“He was out to create something ‘unheard-of’,” observed conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt beforehand. And true to form: What the conductor had to offer as he commenced his Mozart/Da Ponte cycle in the Theater an der Wien was something we “had never before heard like this” (Kurier). Nikolaus Harnoncourt, “master” of period performance practice, realized a project that had long been one of his dearest wishes: for the first time, he and his “original-sound orchestra” Concentus Musicus and his personal choice of singers were presenting the complete Mozart/Da Ponte cycle and harvesting the fruits of his Mozart research – an “enthusiastically acclaimed cycle!” (news.at). During an intensive phase of rehearsal and preparation, he was in search of a Mozart hermeneutic resting on historical sources and yet anchored in our own time, in order to stage the whole Da Ponte “trilogy” – Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte – in a matter of a mere six weeks. Harnoncourt has once again lived up to his name as a “Mozart rebel”: “True to his reputation as a provocateur, Harnoncourt takes at a fast speed what we are accustomed to hear slow, while reining in what we expected to be lively” (Forum Opera).

PART I: Le nozze di Figaro + Documentary: Nikolaus Harnoncourt - Between Obsession and Perfection (Le nozze di Figaro)

Original title Mozart: Le nozze di Figaro
Genre Opera
Recording location Theater an der Wien, 2014
Duration 242 mins (Opera: 190’ / Doc 52’)
Production Company A production of UNITEL and ORF III in cooperation with Theater an der Wien
Composer W.A. Mozart
Orchestra / Band Concentus Musicus Wien
Conductor Nikolaus Harnoncourt
Soloist Bo Skovhus, Christine Schäfer, Mari Eriksmoen, Andrè Schuen, Elisabeth Kulman, Ildikó Raimondi, Peter Kálmán, Mauro Peter
Choir Arnold Schoenberg Chor
Chorus Master Erwin Ortner