Le nozze di Figaro (Georg Solti recording)

Maria Anna, Wolfgang and Leopold Mozart painted by Johann Nepomuk della Croce in 1780

Alan Blyth reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in November 1982. Its cast, he wrote, was the finest company ever to have performed the opera in a recording studio. Kiri Te Kanawa, precise in recitatives and a bright golden thread in the tapestry of her ensembles, sang the Countess's music with "her familiarly warm, soft tone unimpaired and a much greater understanding than in the past [of how to achieve] the maximum with the text". Lucia Popp was the recitatives' "life and soul", a clever, amusing, "spirited [Susanna] very much at the centre of affairs". Frederica von Stade was "the very epitome of restless, ardent youthfulness" as Cherubino, seemingly more at ease with Solti than she had been a few years earlier when recording the role for Herbert von Karajan (see Le nozze di Figaro (Herbert von Karajan April 1978 recording). Jane Berbié, on the other hand, a "lively" Marcellina who had sung for Karajan too, had delivered her showpiece aria better for the latter. The album's male singers were as impressive as its women. Thomas Allen's Count was as potent a figure as Allen had made him on stage, with its "cutting edge undiminished, its sexual dimension evident in every bar", his recitatives, arias and ensembles equally infused with the Count's angry, jealous lust for his valet's fiancée. Samuel Ramey's Figaro had a voice more like his master's than was ideal, but was "a formidable rival to the Count", forceful in his resentful defiance, "a servant full of indignation, ... no prancing barber but an incipient revolutionary". The most enjoyable performance in a minor role was that of Giorgio Tadeo as a "garlicky, rip-roaring" ancestor of Gaffer Gamgee. But there was also much pleasure to be had from Kurt Moll's immaculate, "rollicking" Bartolo and Robert Tear's serpentine Basilio - a performance so elaborately crafted that even the character's tedious Act 4 aria became interesting. The London Philharmonic Orchestra played well, although not as well as they had on other occasions. The only musician on the album who was open to serious criticism was its conductor. Georg Solti took recitatives faster than was dramatically realistic, and drove most of the opera forward at a "peremptory" pace that added to the excitement of its finales but subtracted from its warmth elsewhere. Solti's was a reading of "brusque rhythm and very precise detail", but "rather too little humanity in its unsmiling features". Decca's production made intelligent use of the stereo soundstage, but had two definite weaknesses - the opera was recorded in an acoustic too reverberant to suit the libretto's private, domestic settings, and the digital recording process has placed the musicians in a "glassy no-man's-land". In sum, the album could "certainly not be improved on today", but older versions of the opera conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini and Sir Colin Davis were even better.[3]

Lorenzo da Ponte painted by Samuel Morse, circa1830

George Jellinek reviewed the album on LP in the "Best Recordings of the Month" pages of Stereo Review in January 1983. Kiri Te Kanawa's Countess, he wrote, was "exquisite, though with a subdued quality that does not project a strong enough profile for the role". The Countess's climactic declaration of forgiveness in Act 4 was "thrown away" by the manner in which Georg Solti conducted it. As Susanna and Cherubino respectively, Lucia Popp and Frederica von Stade were "perfectly in character and admirably vocalized", although, again because of Solti, von Stade's "Non so più" lacked the appeal and expressiveness with which she usually invested it. As Marcellina, Jane Berbié sounded "frayed". Thomas Allen took Jellinek by surprise: as well as presenting the Count with the "right kind of imperious elegance", he brought a vocal weight to the role which the critic had imagined to be beyond his resources. As Figaro, Samuel Ramey was "ideal" - "vigorous, dynamic and youthful sounding, characterizing the role with the right combination of cunning and defiance". The best of the remainder of the cast was Giorgio Tadeo, "solid" as the gardener, Antonio. Kurt Moll's Bartolo was sung with "remarkable sonority" but unimaginatively, and Robert Tear's rather nasal voice, while good at conveying Basilio's oiliness, was not very pleasant to listen to. Solti's conducting was on balance disappointing. After a sprint through the overture, he chose tempi that were mostly successful, and his overall interpretation of the score had a praiseworthy self-consistency. But his reading was not as closely focused as it might have been, and was "rather short on charm". The opera's best loved passages were performed without some of their usual magic. Nevertheless, the excellence of the album's five principal soloists was such that overall, the set was the best Le nozze di Figaro of the stereo era.[4]

Sir Georg Solti photographed by Allen Warren in 1975

J. B. Steane reviewed the album on LP in Gramophone in April 1983. "In this Figaro", he wrote, "all is well and much is magnificent". Never, in all his many years of opera-going, had he heard a Countess as good as Kiri Te Kanawa's. Lucia Popp's Susanna was "delicious", and Frederica von Stade as Cherubino was as "delectable" as her colleagues. Thomas Allen's Count had "plenty of amorous honey" in his voice, and the tone of Samuel Ramey's Figaro had commendable "firmness and body" from his lowest notes to his highest. The chorus was "fresh voiced and precise", the London Philharmonic Orchestra "alert and sensitive" and the engineering first class.[5]

The audio expert Geoffrey Horn reviewed the album in Gramophone in April 1984. Like his musical colleagues, he was impressed by the quality of Solti's cast, and like Blyth and Jellinek, slightly less impressed by Solti's conducting. The London Philharmonic Orchestra sounded "racily forced" and often weary. His chief complaint repeated a point that Blyth had made. The reverberant acoustic of Decca's Kingsway Hall made it difficult for listeners to imagine that the action of the opera was truly taking place in the domestic settings decreed by the librettist,[6]

Richard Lawrence included the album in a survey of the discography of the opera in Gramophone's 2011 Awards issue. Its cast, he wrote, was "glittering". Kiri Te Kanawa's Countess was "meltingly beautiful", Yvonne Kenny's Barbarina "touchingly worried" in her search for her lost pin, Thomas Allen "quite simply superb" as the Count and Samuel Ramey "round-toned" and "forceful" as Figaro. He was surprised that in Basilio's aria, the London Philharmonic's horns had played an octave lower than the canonical edition of the score required. His ultimate verdict on the album was that somehow it didn't quite satisfy.[7]

In the year after its release, the album won the Grammy award for the best operatic recording of 1983.[8]

• Sir Thomas Allen (baritone), Count Almaviva
• Dame Kiri Te Kanawa (soprano), Countess Almaviva
• Lucia Popp (1939-1993, soprano), Susanna
• Samuel Ramey (baritone), Figaro
• Frederica von Stade (mezzo-soprano), Cherubino
• Jane Berbié (mezzo-soprano), Marcellina
• Kurt Moll (1938-2017, bass), Doctor Bartolo
• Robert Tear (1939-2011, tenor), Don Basilio
• Philip Langridge (1939-2010, tenor), Don Curzio
• Yvonne Kenny (soprano), Barbarina
• Giorgio Tadeo (bass), Antonio
• Lynda Russell (soprano), girl
• Anne Mason (soprano), girl
• Sir Jeffrey Tate (1943-2017), harpsichord
• London Opera Chorus
• London Philharmonic Orchestra
• Sir Georg Solti (1912-1997), conductor[1]

• Christopher Raeburn (1928-2009), producer
• Michael Haas, assistant producer
• John Dunkerley, engineer
• Colin Moorfoot, engineer[1]