FIGARO Music Lesson: Marches, Minuets, Accompanied Recitative, and the Pastoral

In this ‘listener’s guide’ to one of opera’s favorite comedies, Seattle Opera Dramaturg Jonathan Dean investigates Mozart’s use of some eighteenth-century musical idioms in THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO. Musical examples from Seattle Opera Marriage of Figaro productions in 1997 (conducted by Antonello Allemandi, starring Mary Mills); 2009 (conducted by Dean Williamson, starring Marius Kwiecien, Twyla Robinson, Christine Brandes, Arthur Woodley, and Oren Gradus); and 2016, (conducted by Gary Thor Wedow, starring Morgan Smith, Karin Mushegain,  Shenyang, Nuccia Focile, Bernarda Bobro).