Le nozze di Figaro - Genoa

Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa, 16/10/2026

 Conductor: Jordi Bernàcer. Production: Emilio Sagi, revived by Matteo Anselmi. Sets: Daniel Bianco. Orchestra and Chorus: Teatro Carlo Felice.

 Principal cast: Vito Priante (Figaro), Daniela Cappiello (Susanna), Roberto de Candia (Count Almaviva), Carmela Remigio (Countess Almaviva), José Maria Lo Monaco (Cherubino), Sonia Ganassi (Marcellina), Alex Martini (Bartolo).

The opening of the 2026-27 opera season marked an important moment for the Teatro Carlo Felice itself. Its new leadership team, superintendent Michele Galli and artistic director Federico Pupo, was opening the first season shaped fully under its direction. They face the challenge of strengthening the theatre’s finances while widening its audience and sustaining its artistic ambitions.

Then a surprise: our first experience of opera in an Italian opera house began not with Mozart, but with the workers. Before the opening performance of Le nozze di Figaro at Genoa’s magnificent Teatro Carlo Felice, a representative of three trade unions addressed the audience about the conditions facing those whose labour makes opera possible. Their intervention was greeted with applause. An appropriate introduction to an opera about masters and servants, privilege and power, deception and truth.

It also seemed entirely appropriate to Genoa. We have spent nearly four weeks exploring this extraordinary city, whose palaces, churches, narrow streets and harbour testify to centuries of commercial ambition, financial power and cultural achievement. Yet Genoa is also a city struggling to understand its past, confront its present and determine its future. During our stay, we have encountered Ericsson workers protesting threatened job losses, steelworkers fighting for their future, and young people mobilising over education, rents, employment, Palestine and war. The streets of the carruggi are alive with conversation and argument.

So, it seems, is the opera house. Outside the Carlo Felice, and throughout its public spaces, there was palpable excitement and energy. Young people mingled with older opera-goers. Friends greeted friends. Conversations multiplied, laughter echoed and groups gathered in animated discussion.

Then came the silence. The orchestra began, the audience settled, and Mozart took possession of the theatre. During the intervals the seemingly unstoppable hubbub resumed.

We knew the story, but the singing was in Italian and so were the surtitles. Without an English translation, we had to listen differently. Voices, orchestra, movement, scenery and the relationships between performers became our means of understanding.

Another aspect of the evening increasingly interested me: the audience itself. From our seats, about twelve rows back from the stage, I was struck by how little laughter there was among those around us. This was, after all, opera buffa, Mozart’s great comedy of mistaken identities, sexual intrigue, social pretension and the humiliation of the powerful. Surely laughter was part of what he intended. Yet there was surprisingly little of it nearby. I wondered whether familiarity had dulled the comic surprises, or whether these listeners had simply learned to savour Mozart’s wit without expressing their amusement aloud.

Behind us, and from the upper reaches of the theatre, the response was different. There was laughter, enthusiasm and spontaneous applause.

Were we witnessing something of a generational difference, perhaps even a divide, between those for whom Figaro was an old acquaintance and those encountering its comic possibilities with fresher eyes? I could not know. But it raised a question: does repeated familiarity with a great work deepen our appreciation, or sometimes diminish our capacity to be surprised?

What struck me most, however, was the unity. Whatever our ages, expectations or familiarity with Mozart, we shared the same extraordinary space, listening to the same performers and responding differently to the same unfolding drama. And at certain moments, those differences seemed to dissolve. Carmela Remigio’s Dove sono i bei momenti, the Countess’s lament for lost happiness, was one such moment. Her singing gathered sorrow, dignity and longing into a performance of considerable emotional authority. The applause seemed to unite the theatre.

Emilio Sagi’s elegant production, first staged in Madrid in 2009, evokes an aristocratic household without transporting the story into contemporary circumstances. I found that restraint effective. The opera hardly needs an imposed political message. Its examination of power, privilege, sexual entitlement and resistance remains recognisable more than two centuries after its creation.

The women increasingly become the source of intelligence, imagination and moral authority. Daniela Cappiello’s Susanna brought clarity, vitality and vocal brightness to the performance. Remigio’s Countess supplied its emotional depth. Their exquisite duet Sull’aria, in which mistress and servant combine their voices and ingenuity, became a musical bridge of solidarity across class boundaries.

Vito Priante’s Figaro grew in complexity as the evening progressed, moving from comic confidence towards jealousy and uncertainty. Roberto de Candia gave the Count an increasingly exposed presence, while José Maria Lo Monaco’s Cherubino supplied youthful energy and exquisite moments. Sonia Ganassi brought warmth to Marcellina.

Under Jordi Bernàcer, the orchestra gave the performance urgency and momentum. Occasionally I wondered whether that momentum came at the expense of the singers, whose voices sometimes seemed to disappear into the theatre and the sets great spaces. Yet these were passing moments in an evening of musical richness.

The most profound moment came at the end. In the final garden scene, Mozart brings together the accumulated misunderstandings, jealousies and injuries of the preceding hours. Comedy gives way to something deeper. The performers have both opportunity and challenge. The Count, whose power has driven so much of the action, finds himself publicly exposed. He asks forgiveness. The Countess grants it. The Count remains Count. The servants remain servants. The social order survives.

But something has changed. The powerful man must acknowledge his wrongdoing. The woman he has humiliated now possesses the moral authority to decide whether reconciliation is possible. Her forgiveness is not submission. It is an assertion of dignity and a demand that power recognise its limits.

Mozart offers not revolution, but the possibility of a different moral order. The Countess’s voice and the other voices do not overturn their world, but worked to open our ears and minds in the Teatro Carlo Felice to what can be acknowledged and changed within their world and ours. 

And suddenly I was thinking again about Genoa. Behind the city’s magnificent palaces stand generations of sailors, dockworkers, artisans and servants whose labour created its wealth. Their successors are still arguing over power, opportunity and justice. The workers who opened the evening reminded us that even great cultural institutions depend upon human labour. Mozart reminded us that beauty and justice are not separate questions.

We arrived as visitors, uncertain what to expect from our first opera in Italy. We left feeling that we had encountered something essential about both opera and Genoa.

Go to Genoa. Walk its streets. Explore its palaces and harbour. Listen to its people, their stories and their struggles.

And go to the opera. You may not understand every word. We certainly did not. But Mozart’s music, the performers and the extraordinary experience of sharing it with a Genoese audience communicated something that needed no translation. The 26-27 seasons continues till June 2027. 

We came to hear Mozart. We left having heard something of Genoa itself.