The 2006 Salzburg Nozze di Figaro has a very long pre-history for me. It has been a journey in seven stages.
In 1949, when the Vienna State Opera was still a pile of rubble, Figaro was played in the Redoutensaal - in German, I believe. It was here that I first became an ardent, lifelong Mozartian, owing not least to the wonderful Sena Jurinac as Cherubino. I couldn't hear her first aria without crying.
Years later, around 1958, there came along a recording with the Vienna Symphony Orchestra, Graziella Sciutti as Susanna and Teresa Stich-Randall as the Countess. By now I was critical of artistic conceptions, as I'd had to assume personal responsibility for many performances of Baroque works and the music of Haydn. Even so, these two singers helped to shape my ideas on the ideal way of performing Mozart's music.
In the 1980s I found myself directly challenged by this gigantic work: now I was responsible for the conception, first in Zurich, where the director was the late, great Jean-Pierre Ponnelle, then in Amsterdam with Jürgen Flimm.
Later still, I again worked with Flimm in Zurich, and in Salzburg in 1996 with Luc Bondy. It is a long story, and shows no sign of ending.
Each time we went back to basics. What is Mozart trying to tell us? What is his message? What is the role played by Da Ponte's text? And to what extent does Beaumarchais still show through? (Each time a little less, whereas Mozart's message concerning the web of human relationships that permeates everything has become increasingly important.)
With each successive staging, Mozart’s clearly written autograph score has interposed itself between me and all the current and generally accepted traditions, doing so, moreover, with ever greater weight and implacability, as if issuing a warning. The usual theatrical dramaturgy has been overlaid by Mozart's clear demands concerning the dramaturgy of keys and, even more, the dramaturgy of tempos. Their demands have become utterly compelling for me.
In this way, each new engagement with the work has been a new beginning and at the same time a further stage in the foregoing process. There is a compelling reason for everything that Mozart wrote, and his corrections are particularly instructive. He never made mistakes. Our task is to understand him... sometimes we succeed in this.