The initial reviews of this recording were so comically damning that I suspected the product couldn't possibly be as bad as its reputation suggested.
Unfortunately, the critics weren't exaggerating: this really is as off-putting a Figaro as you could ever hear.
The main reason is Nikolaus Harnoncourt's perversely slow choice of tempo for nearly every number in the score. Not a single member of this starry cast emerges unscathed from his pedantic approach, which often involves getting slower as each number progresses. The rests in Figaro's 'Se vuol ballare' continue well beyond the number of beats that Mozart indicates; Harnoncourt keeps pulling back in the Overture (which has seldom sounded so turgid); Bartolo's 'La vendetta' almost comes to a standstill; and Susanna's second-act aria, 'Venite, inginocchiatevi', is so laboured that it is nothing short of irritating. At the other end of the scale, Cherubino's 'Non so più' sets off at such a rushed pace that neither the orchestra nor the singer can maintain the speed. It's ironic that Harnoncourt claims to be a scholar with great insight into the music of this period, yet by taking so many liberties with tempi he is enforcing an interpretation on the score which does not make for a convincing performance.
The Vienna Philharmonic plays with immaculate tone and an attractive sheen, but Harnoncourt gives the musicians little chance either to uncover any subtleties or perform with unbridled virtuosity.
Having struggled to engage with some of Harnoncourt's performances in the past, I was not entirely surprised in my disappointment with his interpretation of Figaro. However, I was genuinely astonished by the poor quality of many of the voices on offer.
Anna Netrebko, for instance, would seem to be very ill-suited to the music of Susanna. She is both out of tune and very heavy in her approach to light and elegant pieces such as the opening duet and 'Deh vieni, non tardar'. Having admired her Donna Anna at Covent Garden in 2004 (when she took over late in the day), I expected a greater sense of style and vocal purity than she manages to produce here. No doubt Harnoncourt's over-flexible tempi and a disappointing acoustic on the CD (the recording was taken live) are partly to blame, but one might equally ask whether this is really her role.
Just as much of a let down, Ildebrando D'Archangelo sounds oddly strained as Figaro and has been captured in better voice elsewhere. The high Fs in 'Se vuol ballare' are almost shouted, to the extent that the tessitura of the role seems out of the singer's reach, and Harnoncourt's ponderous speed for 'Non più andrai' is met with a lack of sparkle in the voice. Even more irritating, when Figaro starts to list the hardships Cherubino will face as a soldier in the central section of the latter aria, Harnoncourt imposes excessive pauses between each item.
The Almavivas are no better. Dorothea Röschmann has the ideal weight and creamy tone for the Countess, but she does not quite enjoy the dexterity of a Te Kanawa at the top of the range - and both her arias are marred, needless to say, by impossibly excessive speeds. Bo Skovus sounds uncharacteristically ugly as the Count, rather than a man of charm and elegance. His aria is on the fast side, oddly enough, which means that the melancholy side of the aria is passed over; perhaps it's not his fault that some of his singing resembles barking.
Franz-Josef Selig is also very ragged, vocally, as Bartolo. Christine Schäfer is more secure than the rest of the soloists, but she is a rather bland Cherubino and her singing is upstaged by unwritten surges of tempo in both of her arias, and the other singers barely make an impact. Neither the recitatives nor the great act finales are conducted in a way that helps the singers; none of them comes out of the experience unscathed.
With an opera that has been so well served on record to date, there would need to be a particularly good reason to buy a new version in any case; when the conducting conflicts with the composition to this extent, there is no motive for replacing one of the old favourites.