[ Deutsche Grammophon / 3 CD Box Set ]
Release Date: Tuesday 2 August 2016
This item is only available to us via Special Order. We should be able to get it to you in 3 - 6 weeks from when you order it.
After "Don Giovanni", "Così fan tutte" and "Die Entführung aus dem Serail" this is the fourth of DG's series of seven Mozart operas conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin, and initiated by Rolando Villazón, in collaboration with U-Live, Festspielhaus Baden Baden and with the generous support of ROLEX.
Recorded with a stellar cast, one of the brightest and most insightful conductors of our day and a specialist handpicked orchestra playing at their best in the stunning venue of Festspielhaus Baden-Baden (July 2015), Yannick Nézet-Séguin's "completely gripping, high-contrast" Figaro is "a brilliant triumph", wrote Badische Zeitung of the July 2015 concert performance recorded here, while heaping praise on Luca Pisaroni's "thrilling" Figaro, Thomas Hampson's Count "illuminating every word", Sonya Yoncheva's Countess "recalling Callas's vocal colours", Angela Brower's "fascinatingly delicate, sensitive" Cherubino and Anne Sofie von Otter's "wonderfully perceptive, charming Marcellina", all in a performance "crowned" by Christiane Karg's "enchanting" Susanna and Rolando Villazón as Basilio, who "had the audience at his feet".
"You are in his safe hands the moment Mozart's upstairs-downstairs comedy kicks off, the Chamber Orchestra of Europe buoyant, textures balanced, colours vibrant...Yoncheva's magnificently melancholic Countess is a peach of a performance, lusciously, dreamily sung...[Villazón] grabs hold of every bar with comic gusto." (Sunday Times)