Le nozze di Figaro (Herbert von Karajan recording)

Le nozze di Figaro is a 169-minute studio album of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's opera, performed by Christiane Barbaux, Jules Bastin, Jane Berbié, Ileana Cotrubas, José van Dam, Zoltan Kélémén, Tom Krause, Marjon Lambriks, Frederica von Stade, Anna Tomowa-Sintow and Heinz Zednik with the Chorus of the Vienna State Opera and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra under the direction of Herbert von Karajan. It was released in 1979.
Background
The album includes the Act Four arias for Marcellina and Basilio which some other recordings omit.
In Act Three of the opera, the Sextet has traditionally been performed after the Count's recitative and aria "Hai già vinta la causa!... Vedrò mentr'io sospiro" snd before the Countess's recitative and aria "E Susanna non vien!... Dove sono". In 1963, Robert Moberly and Christopher Raeburn suggested that this sequence entailed defects in the opera's storyline, and conjectured that originally Mozart and da Ponte had placed the Sextet after the Countess's number, not before it. They pointed out that at the première of the opera, Antonio and Bartolo had been performed by the same singer, and argued that the score might have been rearranged to give him the opportunity to change his costume. Herbert von Karajan adopted the Moberly-Raeburn sequence when conducting Jean-Pierre Ponnelle's new staging of the opera at the Salzburg Festival in 1973, and adhered to it when he made the present album (of which Raeburn was the producer).
Although it is a studio recording, the album derived from a theatrical production. In May 1977, a year before the album was taped, Bastin, Berbié, Cotrubas, van Dam, Equiluz, Kélémén, Krause, von Stade, Tomowa-Sintow and Zednik performed Le nozze di Figaro at the Vienna State Opera under von Karajan's direction. (An Austrian Radio recording of one of their performances was released on CD in 2012 by Orfeo (catalogue number C856 123D)).
Recording
The album was recorded using analogue technology in April and May 1978 in the Sofiensaal, Vienna.

J. B. Steane reviewed the album in Gramophone in October 1979. Herbert von Karajan, he wrote, had a great deal to say about Le nozze di Figaro, which he had recorded with an attractive cast including Frederica von Stade. A main point of his interpretation was the differentiation of the public and the private. Recitative was usually private in his reading, and mostly went at a reflective pace and quietly. In concerted passages, asides were clearly recognizable as such. His was a performance of marked contrasts, as foreshadowed in the playing of the Overture. His faster tempi sometimes sounded uneasy; one felt aware of the conductor moving things on. But many passages nevertheless had a special touch. Von Stade's performance of Cherubino's aria "Non so più", for example, was completely different from that of her earlier recital album (Mozart & Rossini Arias), the voice on the new recording caressing and yearning to an accompaniment of gentle murmurs and subdued ardour and excitement. Von Stade was excellent throughout. Figaro and the Count (José van Dam and Tom Krause) sang with fine tone, and Ileana Cotrubas was a delightful Susanna. Anna Tomowa-Sintow's Countess, on the other hand, sometimes sounded tremulous, and was no match for Elisabeth Schwarzkopf or Gundula Janowitz. Yet the new Figaro was full of life and insight, and hearing it had been a special event.
James Goodfriend reviewed the album in Stereo Review in December 1979. In London's new Le nozze di Figaro, he wrote, what one got was style. It would take less than a minute of the overture to convince listeners that something pretty glorious was about to happen, and each succeeding moment would strengthen purchasers' conviction that they has picked the right recording. The cast was international, but the album was Mozart done the Viennese way. The Vienna Philharmonic played as though they really meant it - something which was not invariably the case - and when they did that, they were the finest orchestra in the world. The album was a great musical achievement, and the consistency and elegance of its musical style were undoubtedly attributable to its conductor, Herbert von Karajan. Karajan had assembled a cast of singers without a weak link who, if not necessarily the equals of their most illustrious predecessors, were at least worthy of being spoken of in the same breath as them. José van Dam was a really splendid Figaro, and Ileana Cotrubas's Susanna was certainly the best thing that she had ever done on disc. Frederica von Stade was already on the way to becoming famous for her Cherubino; she not only had the voice for the part, and the musical intelligence, but also a temperament that aligned perfectly with that of the role. She was infinitely convincing. Similarly, Tom Krause's musical nature, with its slight, inherent stiffness, helped in the characterization of the Count because of a congruence between singer and song. It was true, perhaps, that Anna Tomowa-Sintow's Countess could have been a little more aristocratic, but she was both musically lovely and dramatically credible. The lesser roles were handled to near perfection too, with Heinz Zednik providing a handsomely voiced Don Basilio. Mention should also be made of Konrad Leitner for some uncommonly inventive continuo work at the keyboard. There were no faults in the recording quality, and the album as a whole had to be rated as one of the best versions of the opera available.
Alan Blyth reviewed the album on CD in Gramophone in July 1988. He dismissed von Karajan's reading as unstable, noting the eccentricity of the conductor's tempi. An excellent cast, he thought, had been cowed by von Karajan's dominance.
Richard Lawrence mentioned the album in a survey of the Le nozze di Figaro discography in Gramophones 2011 Awards issue. Frederica von Stade's performance was a winning one, he thought, but José van Dam's whispering when plotting with Susanna and the Countess in Act Two became irritating with repeated hearing.
Accolade
In the December 1979 issue of Stereo Review, the album was included in the magazine's list of "Best Recordings of the Month".

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