23 October 2020, 15:53
Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro gets a retro make-over in this cover of ‘Non so più’.
Mozart: Marriage Of Figaro is a English album released on Sep 2001. Mozart: Marriage Of Figaro Album has 72 songs sung by Sir Colin Davis. Listen to all songs in high quality & download Mozart: Marriage Of Figaro songs on Gaana.com. 'Figaro' went on to be voted best song of the first half of 1978 by readers of Look-in magazine and best song of the year by viewers of TV's Magpie. A cover version was recorded for the Top of the Pops album series, appearing on Volume 63 and The Best of 1978. Classical music can be heart-breaking, awe-inspiring – and will sometimes leave you completely lost for words. We think the latter is an appropriate description for this new-age take on Mozart ’s opera The Marriage of Figaro.
Classical music can be heart-breaking, awe-inspiring – and will sometimes leave you completely lost for words.
We think the latter is an appropriate description for this new-age take on Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro.
So, what’s happening here?
Well, it’s a fresh – and frankly, slightly perplexing – take on ‘Non so più’, an aria sung by the character Cherubino in Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro.
Figaro Song Download Mp3
One vocalist has replicated herself singing to create vocal layering in a techno-pop remix of the aria. She has added in an 80s-inspired backing band of drums, bass guitar, electric guitar and even a retro keytar (a keyboard guitar) to create a synthetic disco sound.
The vocals are layered to create a harmony on the main melodic line, and there’s even a counter-melody whose vocals are (dare we say?) reminiscent of Ennio Morricone’s The Good, the Bad and the Ugly theme.
Don’t believe us? Have a listen to this from 3:30 and you’ll see our point.
Mozart wrote forty-one symphonies and twenty-seven piano concertos. And yet the work which said everything for him, the genre of music he truly thought to be the crucial currency of a composer, was the opera.
Mozart considered opera to be the supreme musical language, where everything was perfectly possible and, with a genius such as Mozart’s, possibly perfect. Mozart would have just hit thirty and had been enjoying one of his most successful periods when The Marriage of Figaro received its premiere. He was in Vienna, at the centre of the musical world and away from what he considered the parochial restrictions of his native Salzburg.
One contemporary reporter, who was lucky enough to witness Mozart himself directing the entire opera from the keyboard, said, ‘Mozart directed the orchestra, playing his fortepiano; the joy which this music causes is so far removed from all sensuality that one cannot speak of it. Where could words be found that are worthy to describe such joy?’ Apart from the wonderful Overture, vocal highlights include the divine ‘Sull’aria’ duet, and the aria ‘Porgi’.
Recommended Recording
Carol Vaness; Nuccia Focile; Alessandro Corbelli; Alastair Miles; Susanne Mentzer; Scottish Chamber Orchestra and Chorus; Charles Mackerras (conductor). Telarc: 3CD80725.
The Marriage Of Figaro
Illustration: Mark Millington