Found this.
Don't be irritated Andrei, I mean well.
Le nozze di Figaro, 'The Marriage of Figaro',K492.
Christiane Oelze sop Susanna ; Patrizia Biccire sop Countess Almaviva ; Béatrice Cramoix sop Marcellina ; Marie Kuijken sop Barbarina ; Monica Groop mez Cherubino ; Yves Saelens ten Don Basilio ; Philip Defrancq ten Don Curzio ; Huub Claessens bar Count Almaviva ; Werner Van Mechelen bass Figaro ; Harry van der Kamp bass Bartolo ; Jean-Guy Devienne bass Antonio
Namur Chamber Choir; (La) Petite Bande/Sigiswald Kuijken
Accent CD ACC98133/5D (176 minutes : DDD)
Live performance
Reviewed: Gramophone 8/1999, Alan Blyth
I can do no better than quote Stravinsky’s rhetorical question (made, in his case, on hearing a new piece of music): ‘Do we need it?’ With the catalogue already brimming over with recommendable versions of Mozart’s masterpiece, an addition to the ranks must have something special to justify its issue. Neither in terms of conducting nor singing does this one have that advantage though it probably made a pleasant enough evening in the opera house. Kuijken directs a perfectly respectable reading but one missing the dynamism of Gardiner’s or the peculiarly intimate and lived-in feeling of the admirable Ostman (which also includes alternatives including Barbara Bonney’s enchanting account of Susanna’s ‘Al desio’).
Although it is a live recording it wants the sense of theatrical vitality and tension found in its rivals. La Petite Bande plays with the customary acuity noted in its earlier sets of Mozart’s operas but its performance doesn’t have either the buoyancy or warmth notable in that of its period-instrument rivals, let alone that in such modern-instrument classics as Erich Kleiber, Giulini and Mackerras, and the recitative is accompanied in the dryest manner possible.
As the members of the cast introduce themselves, one begins to sense a feeling of anonymity similar to that found in the conducting. Christiane Oelze is a fresh, lively Susanna, who sings with a good line and pretty tone, but she isn’t vocally or temperamentally quite in the class of Bonney (Ostman) or Alison Hagley (Gardiner), who bring a spirit to their readings not found in Oelze’s. Her Figaro, Werner van Mechelen, has an uninteresting, far from steady voice and finds little of the fun or daring in the part evinced by his counterparts. Huub Claessens’s Almaviva isn’t sufficiently differentiated in timbre from Figaro, nor is his presence as formidable as Hakan Hagegard’s on the Ostman version though he always sings with style: his aria is an example of the conductor not giving the music a firm enough profile.
As the Countess, Patrizia Biccire catches the sadness of the character’s predicament, and sings her arias with a distinction of tone and style often missing elswhere in this set. Monica Groop’s Cherubino palpitates suitably, but her voice is a shade heavy for a role really intended for a soprano. Neither Marcellina or Basilio does enough to justify inclusion of their dull pieces. There’s a lightweight Bartolo (a young singer trying to sound old) and an edgy Barbarina. The cast adds embellishments and appoggiaturas (not enough) in a haphazard fashion.
The recording catches the ambience of the theatre where it was recorded and the mood of a live occasion, but it’s certainly not superior to the Archiv and L’Oiseau-Lyre, which continue to head the field of period-instrument sets.'
Alan Blyth
