One wedding. One marriage on the rocks. One scheme. One day.

When a womanising aristocrat tries to seduce his valet’s pretty young wife, his fiancée and servants conspire to teach him a lesson in fidelity he’ll never forget. Plots are hatched, promises made (and broken) and disguises donned, as Mozart’s ‘mad day’ unfolds.

A revolutionary comedy in every sense, Mozart and Da Ponte’s adaptation of Beaumarchais’s banned 1778 play about warring masters and servants takes a topical satire and broadens it into a deeply human drama. The battle between both classes and sexes remains sharply bladed, but the characters themselves are rounded by some of Mozart’s most sparkling music into feeling, fallible and all too familiar personalities.

Director Michael Grandage updates the action to the swinging sixties in his 2012 production, starring Lydia Teuscher as Susanna and Vito Priante as her beloved Figaro. Robin Ticciati conducts.

Recorded live at Glyndebourne Opera House, Festival 2012.