The Marriage of Figaro

A brief introduction:

When a lusty aristocrat tries to seduce his valet’s pretty young fiancée, his servants and long-suffering wife conspire to teach him a lesson in fidelity.

A revolutionary comedy in every sense, Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte’s adaptation of Beaumarchais’s infamous 1778 play about warring masters and servants takes a topical satire and swells it into a human drama – warm to the touch. The battle between both classes and sexes remains keenly bladed, but the characters themselves are softened and rounded by Mozart’s music into feeling, fallible and all-too-real personalities.

Why not to miss it:

Johanna Wallroth in The Marriage of Figaro, Festival 2025. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

The Marriage of Figaro is the quintessential Glyndebourne opera – the work that first launched the festival back in 1934, with Audrey Mildmay herself as Susanna. Since then, the opera has remained a staple of the Glyndebourne repertoire – performed over 500 times – with memorable productions most recently from Graham Vick and Michael Grandage. 

Premiered in 2025, Mariame Clément’s staging of Figaro draws inspiration from 18th-century French artist Louis Carmontelle. The period production’s delicate pastel-prettiness belies the rich, primary-coloured characters that emerge in a show The Guardian called ‘as poignant as it is funny’, praised by The Times for its ‘raw emotional power’. 

Julia Hansen’s revolving sets bring pace to a deliciously tangled drama that spills out of windows and into gardens, hides in gazebos and emerges unexpectedly from behind armchairs. Alert to every shift of mood and every nuance of Da Ponte’s plot, it’s a staging that reveals the depth of a piece whose many laughs conceal a darker emotional and political core.

A great moment to look out for:

After a sequence of domestic dramas and entanglements inside the Count’s great house, the action of Act IV finally spills out of doors into the gardens. Night has fallen, and suddenly all bets are off in a topsy-turvy denouement in which the servant becomes the mistress, and the polite rules of daylight society are abandoned.

It’s an unsettling, deeply moving moment of revelation – crowned by Mozart’s most exquisite finale ‘Contessa perdono’ – and one evocatively staged by Clément, who conjures an enchanting vision of nocturnal transgression. Look carefully at the scenery and you might even recognise the statue in the background – could it be Don Giovanni, giving his silent blessing to the many infidelities and deceptions?

Cast and creative team:

Four season debuts bring a fresh face to Mozart’s central quartet this season. Prize-winning Uzbekistani bass Jasurbek Khaydarov makes his UK opera and Glyndebourne debut in the title role, with Chinese soprano Mei Gui Zhang – praised for her ‘honeyed’ Barbarina at the Met last season – as his beloved Susanna. ‘Electrifying’ American soprano Olivia Boen sings the Countess, with Russian baritone Anton Beliaev – who has recently appeared at the Bregenz festival and Berlin’s Deutsche Oper – as her irascible husband, the Count.

John Christie Award-winner Henna Mun – ‘endearingly sweet’ in last Autumn’s The Railway Children – returns to Glyndebourne as Barbarina, with fellow former Jerwood Artist Rachel Roper as Cherubino. Veteran mezzo Madeleine Shaw returns from the production’s original cast as Marcellina, joined by Henry Waddington as Bartolo and Mark Milhofer as Don Basilio.

Michael Nagl, Elisabeth Boudreault and Madeleine Shaw in The Marriage of Figaro, Festival 2025. Photo: Richard Hubert Smith

Main image: Richard Hubert Smith; image design by Louise Richardson