A handy catch-all word for the elements of Category 1 is “style.” The esteemed British director Tyrone Guthrie said that “style” was just “knowing what kind of play you’re in.” It’s a simple definition that cuts on past the elaborations of many distinguished intellects, and which for us needs to extend to “what kind of music you’re singing and playing.” But for present purposes, ’twill do. And I should say that a crucial component of style in Nozze di Figaro is an adeptness, or deftness, in carrying out nefarious actions—actions of intrigue, that have about them a quality of contrived play but are also of serious emotional consequence. There is a pecking order in terms of manner, of suavity, with the Count and Countess at the top (the Count committing the most offensive of the nefarious actions while attempting, with many disruptions, to maintain the smoothest veneer of manner, the Countess contending with the most poignant grievance while preserving dignity), but down through the witty, inventive, literate servant class that drives the action; the adolescents who are in the how-it’s-done learning phase; and the buffo subplot schemers, this deftness in dealing with it all is crucial. It’s not till we get to the bibulous gardner, Antonio, that we find a character utterly lacking that asset.

With Figaro, there is also a “national school” aspect of style, or at least of aesthetic, that tweaks the musical atmosphere of the work, and whose presence or absence strongly affects its integrity, its sense of togetherness, in performance. The style of the old Glyndebourne sets, for example, we might call Hanoverian—English (Audrey Mildmay, Roy Henderson, Heddle Nash, David Franklin, John Brownlee via Australian concession) with some German blood relations (conductor Fritz Busch, Willi Domgraf-Fassbänder, Luise Helletsgruber)—with the odd Italian (Salvatore Baccaloni), Finn (Aulikki Rautawaara), or American (Ina Souez) thrown in. Except for the presence of Brownlee (see below), that “school” never held much influence over here, except with some critics and connoisseurs with the wax of politeness in their ears, who cited its “taste” as the antidote to Italo-American bumptiousness. In Met performances of the early Bing years, a flavoring loosely described as “Viennese” could be savored, with artists such as Erich Kunz, Hilde Gueden, and Irmgard Seefried in evidence, but it did not last long, except in the person of Lisa della Casa, the house’s most frequent Countess of the ’50s and early ’60’s. In an article for the booklet that accompanied the original LP release of the 1959 Victor Figaro, Joseph Wechsberg, after recounting the inspiring saga of the resumption of operatic performance in Vienna with a Figaro in the Volksoper on May Day, 1945 (the entire city was under Soviet occupation, before the four-power districting went into effect), describes the emergence of what he says became known as “the New Viennese style.” It consisted, according to Wechsberg, of merely  ” . . . a sound sense of tradition and deep respect for the composer’s score, perfect technique, impeccable taste, a subtle shading of nuances, and complete distillation of Mozart’s divine beauty.” I’m afraid that the perfect technique, the impeccable taste, and the complete distillation of divine beauty have increasingly eluded our grasp except in rare instances, but the aspiration sounds roughly like the Hanoverian one, but with better singers and a dollop of Schlag. It’s best personified, I’d say, in the singing of della Casa and Elisabeth Schwarzkopf, and in the conducting of Erich Kleiber, for which I still have great affection.