I wrote at some length on the sea change in what we might call the philosophy of recitative in  “Don Giovanni” Then and Now (6/22/18 and 7/6/18, with some relevant follow-up on 8/10/18), to which I refer you. But the subject deserves further consideration with respect to Figaro. We again meet up with the use of the modern piano, minus any second continuo instrument, in the secco passages. On the Met broadcast, this makes a poor showing. The instrument’s sound is not always present enough and is at times so twangey that I began to suspect the old Knabe had been “prepared” in imitation of the plucked tone. Might they actually have done that? If so, a terrible idea. But on the San Francisco broadcast, the piano is front and center, and very well played, with constant alertness to the stage situation and a sharp binding off of the scenes. It doesn’t search, comment, or decorate; it simply supports, but pointedly. And that works well with the “virtuosic display of repartee” and “a type of rhetorical contest, as if in a race against time” I spoke of in the Giovanni posts. I’m aware of the deprecatory argument from convenience, i. e., that this custom was simply a way of getting the plot the hell out of the way (particularly for audiences who couldn’t follow it anyway) to get to the pretty numbers, and don’t doubt that this was sometimes a factor, especially when the performers were not of this histrionic calibre. But that can’t be the source of this way of playing, which after all developed in front of audiences who could follow it, and took pleasure in keeping up with it. It certainly derived from old commedia practices, which reveled in the sense of quicksilver improvisatory exchange of both voice and body, even when the commedia moved from the dell’arte sort to the eredità. These characters, that tradition tells us, are always a step ahead of you, divining your thought before you finish it, beating you to the punch in debate or giving you instant approbation when in agreement. Besides, in a comedy like Figaro, there is, always, a race against time, an urgent pressing on to complete your scheme before someone else finishes theirs, or discovers yours. A marriage has to happen before La folle journée is over. And there isn’t much time for thoughts to creep in via continuo, either; those can only complicate matters and slow us down. This certainly isn’t the only valid way to play these scenes. But it is one, and when animated by performers of fluency and brilliance, hardly the worst. And it does save time. Obviously, native Italians have a head start on it.

Panizza’s reading is not generally quicker than many others, Walter’s included, but it does have more dash, more ebullience, than most. In some passages, the surface of his legato has prancey pointing rather than unbroken smoothness; I find that invigorating. Tempi, though never on the slow side, are proportionate rather than insistently headlong, and in the big ensembles the episodes are clearly defined. The playing is vigorous and urgent. The AM mono sound does not allow us to accurately judge whether or not we might at times have wished for a warmer feel, or more filling in of the lower part of the spectrum. But we can hear considerable delicacy under, for instance, the Marcellina/Susanna duettino, or in the introduction to Act 4. As for the singers, beginning with the Countess and Count, here in the persons of Elisabeth Rethberg and John Brownlee: