There is no shortage of Figaros, even very good Figaros, on record, but here we have what is, I believe, the first recording of the greatest of all comic operas on instruments of the period, the first to offer the kind of sound that Mozart might have expected to hear on May 1st, 1786 at the court theatre in Vienna. And not only from the orchestra, for a serious and to my mind pretty successful attempt has been made here to choose singers whose voices conform, at least as they are used here, to a scale appropriate to a late eighteenth-century theatre and to the then ideals, as far as we can understand them from contemporary writings and other sources, of vocal skill and beauty. Add to that the fact that Arnold Ostman and his colleagues have tried to reproduce Mozart's attitude to such matters as tempo and ornamentation, and we should have something closer to Mozart's own vision of the work than we have met before.
Of course, a Karajan or a Solti or a Colin Davis may have insights into Mozart that Ostman may not and that may override all these factors; and certainly I would not deny that, in this new set, there are things that seem expressively a little austere by comparison with what we are used to. The colours of a newly cleaned Tintoretto are apt to look a trifle harsh when we have come to love them through centuries of grime. So it is worth listening attentively to a recording like this one and considering what is and what is not the musical counterpart to grime.
This recording, made on the basis of performances at the old Swedish COUft opera house at Drottningholm, follows up the very successful Cosi fan tutte done by similar forces three years ago (414 316-1OH3, 9/85, 414 316-2OH3, 7/86). It shares that set's famous (notorious?) tendency to speedy tempos, but nothing like so consistently nor to the same extent. The Overture here seems fairly rapid, but Ostman's time, 3'51'', would produce a slightly harder egg than the traditional Beecham egg-boiler. And the detail is impeccably clear (listen to the second fiddles' figuration accompanying the secondary theme, for example) the dynamic contrasts nicely sharp. All through the opera the violin sound is bright and finedrawn, played by (I infer from the booklet) six firsts and four seconds, with two each of the lower strings, the result is a light, transparent orchestral sound, with the woodwind and brass amply prominent. Mozart probably had a larger number of violins in the Burgtheater pit, but certainly this is far closer to his intentions than the usual stringsaturated sound that we hear in most modern performances and which indeed is hardly avoidable in a large opera house.
With these lightish voices, and a recording somewhat on the dry side there is little of operahouse resonance—there is a risk that the performance may sometimes seem a little cool and detached; and indeed dramatic atmosphere is not, generally, one of its strengths. But there is plenty of alert characterization and awareness of the words. Arleen Auger is to my mind an outstanding Countess, by any reckoning: she offers a delicate and heartfelt ''Porgi amor'', with many small refinements of phrasing that speak eloquently, and in ''Dove sono'', taken at an unsentimental tempo, sounds youthful and nostalgic—as Beaumarchais certainly intended, and most probably da Ponte and Mozart too—rather than like an aging Marschallin. Her voice is surely at least as beautiful as that of any soprano around today, and certainly her shaping of the lines is intelligent and musicianly. Her Letter Duet, with Barbara Bonney's Susanna, is a particular joy. Bonney's own arias are equally delightful: a spirited, dancing ''Venite inginocchiatevi'', a really lovely tender, sensuous ''Deh vieni non tardar'', enough to inflame any Figaro—though I wish the introductory recitative, ''Giunse alfin il momento'' were not so speedily done; surely this demands more emotional weight? The Cherubino of Alicia Nafe is direct and musical, charming and shapely in ''Voi che sapete'', over which she is not encouraged to linger. Some might prefer a more boyish timbre but I do not find the femininity at all inappropriate. Nancy Argenta presents a charming girlish vignette of Barbarina, Della Jones a spirited Marcellina, elegant and clean in her divisions in ''Il capro e la capretta'', if perhaps using more vibrato than might be ideal.
Petteri Salomaa, the Figaro, is a real find. The voice is on the darkish side rather than a true baritone. He does not at first seem to do a lot with the words, but he is a tidy and even graceful singer, with plenty of spirit; and he expresses ''Aprite un po' quegl'occhi'' with considerable force, with hints of bitterness in his tone, using the consonants to convey depth of feeling. The Count, Hakan Hagegard, is closer in sound to the Figaro than is strictly desirable, but has the proper extra weight, which he uses to good effect in the Act 2 finale and especially in his Act 3 aria, where there is real iron in his voice as he rages—and a real sensual thickening for ''Crudel! perche finora'' and the last act finale. The most idiomatic Italian diction in the cast comes from Carlos Feller's Bartolo, splendidly comic in his vengeance aria though here and elsewhere rather too forwardly recorded. The Basilio struck me as uninteresting, wanting in refinement of timbre, and verbally unclear.
A few general points. The big ensemble finales are impressively controlled. Ostman sustains and resolves the tensions well in Act 2, and in Act 4 sets nearly all the tempos a shade quicker than we are used to—it gives the garden intrigues a vitality and sparkling quality very happily attuned to the world of eighteenth-century comedy. Only at ''Contessa perdono'' does he allow a little luxuriance, and it is all the more welcome and more pointed for that. Sometimes Ostman strikes me as a little inflexible, not sufficiently ready to shape the music. Much care is taken over the recitatives, which are done a little less quickly than I would have expected or indeed hoped—they lack something of the rapid conversational quality that should ideally belong to them—but certainly proper weight is given to each word and its meaning. I am puzzled over the treatment of appoggiaturas, which goes a long way but by no means far enough: a number of essential ones are missing and passages are sometimes differently handled.
Lastly, a word about the appendices. Several extra numbers are included here that you will not often hear in Figaro, and they are placed at the ends of the sides where they belong so that the listener may try the alternative versions for himself. There is a feeble little aria for Marcellina almost certainly not by Mozart, that was used in the 1786 Prague production in place of her Act 1 duet with Susanna. There is a recitative version of ''Aprite, presto aprite'', probably never used. There are revisions of the Count's and Countess's Act 3 arias for the 1789 revival, where the new Count evidently wanted a higher-lying final section (this has been recorded before, by Fischer-Dieskau) and the new Countess a slightly more vivid one, neither is musically superior, but both are keenly interesting. Finally, there are the two new arias for Susanna for the same revival, where it seems that the singer (Mozart's first Fiordiligi) needed weightier songs than those he had supplied for Nancy Storace—both are attractive, but seem to me very much inferior dramatically to the numbers they replace (the second, a big, formal concert-like piece, in particular).
In sum, then a Figaro that may not be interpretatively the last word for everyone, but certainly a thoughtful and intensely thought-provoking reading, revealing in many ways, and full of vitality. It is finely recorded: I have never heard so many of Mozart's notes before. I hope many readers will try it.'