The Marriage of Figaro

Widely regarded as the greatest comic opera ever written, Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro whisks us through the whirlwind events of ‘one crazy day’ (to borrow Beaumarchais’s title for his original play) as Figaro, the Count’s valet, attempts to wed his beloved Susanna, the Countess’s maid, before their philandering master can bed her first.

Following her much-praised ENO productions of Vaughan Williams’s Riders to the Sea and Henze’s Elegy for Young Lovers, leading stage and screen actress Fiona Shaw plots a path through The Marriage of Figaro’s moral maze of disguises, deceptions, sexual intrigue, mutual suspicion and mistaken identity. Former ENO Music Director Paul Daniel returns to conduct an impressive young cast led by Iain Paterson, recently admired at ENO in such diverse roles as Verdi’s Amonasro, Gounod’s Mephistopheles, Mozart’s Don Giovanni and Wagner’s Amfortas, as Figaro and Kate Valentine as the predatory Count’s long-suffering but all-forgiving wife.