"I think it’s one of my best parts. It’s always been a lucky opera for me," said Samuel Ramey in an interview with the "LA Times." This role was also his triumphant debut at La Scala and Covent Garden. As you must have guessed, it’s his charming and radiant Figaro in Mozart’s "Le nozze di Figaro."
Premiered in Vienna on May 1, 1786, with Mozart himself conducting (what would you give just to be there, right?), "Le nozze..." marked his first collaboration with the talented Lorenzo Da Ponte-Catholic priest turned poet and librettist-"Don Giovanni" and "Così fan tutte" would come later. Da Ponte claimed it was his idea to adapt Beaumarchais's play into an opera, recognizing that the story’s c...