Le Nozze di Figaro

This past week has been crammed full of a lot of wonderful experiences, several of them very visual. In addition to spending a lot of time on the highway and taking in vast amounts of natural beauty in all its springtime glory, I have had the chance to attend my first ever live opera! I’ve watched operas before on video, and heard several on audio CDs, but this past week, I attended the performance of "The Marriage of Figaro", Mozart’s wonderfully humorous opera. It was a veritable auditory and visual feast!

I can’t help but wonder at how appropriately beautiful it is that my first real brush with the opera should be "Le Nozze di Figaro". I’ve come across it (or references to it) many times. I watched "Amadeus" when I was in Kansas City, and this was one of the many of Mozart’s musical accomplishments showcased in the movie. I’ve heard the opera-crazy Claude Erskine-Brown on "Rumpole..." singing Figaro’s "Non piu andrai" and "Se vuol ballare". I’ve laughed uncontrollably while watching Tuppy Glossop’s silly infatuation with the prudish opera singer Cora Bellinger, who sang Cherubino’s aria "Non so piu cosa son" on Masterpiece theater’s beautiful "Jeeves and Wooster" series. I’ve delighted in the wicked "Via resti servita", and listened enraptured to Susanna’s aria, "Deh vieni non tardar". And the most beautiful bit of it all is that I finally, finally was able to watch in person, not snippets, but the whole four beautiful acts.