In his detailed and elegant note, Richard Osborne relates how this recording of Figaro was made in July 1955 for release during the 1956 Mozart bicentenary. Based on a 1950 stage production by the artistic director, Carl Ebert, it was the first Glyndebourne recording to be made in stereo. The producer was Lawrance Collingwood, a Gramophone Company veteran from the Gaisberg era. Collingwood was already a master of aural perspective even when working in mono; for this set he enlisted Ebert’s help in deciding how best to ‘stage’ the production for the gramophone. In the end, even the original sound effects were used.
The conductor Vittorio Gui (1885–1975) was a much loved figure in post-war Glyndebourne. A composer in his youth and a pioneering Rossini scholar, Gui was a leading member of a celebrated generation of Italian opera conductors who knew down to the last demisemiquaver the scores they conducted and the capabilities of the singers they engaged. Gui brought with him some outstanding Italian artists, notably the stylish and affable Figaro of Sesto Bruscantini, who was married at the time to the lovely Sena Jurinac, another Glyndebourne regular who here plays the Countess for the first time, nobly and sympathetically. (Osborne goes on to relate the winding path by which the final starry cast was finally arrived at.)
The opera is virtually complete, with just a little recitative and Marcellina’s Act IV aria cut. (It was HMV’s original intention to cut Basilio’s Act IV aria until it was discovered that the Basilio was the incomparable Swiss tenor and character actor Hugues Cuénod. A Glyndebourne institution, Cuénod would still be appearing there in 1987 aged 85.)
The necessity of three discs to accommodate this recording complete for the first time on CD afforded not only the opportunity to present each act unbroken, but also space to include the considerable bonus of the two Mozart symphonies that Gui recorded in 1953 with the same orchestra. (It is not intended that the symphonies be listened to in the course of the opera.)
All tracks are newly transferred and remastered to ART standard at Abbey Road Studios.
