Stuff We Like - Figaro

I hope to be back this afternoon with some kinda political whathaveyou, but in the meantime, Things We Really Like: FIGARO. Look. Mozart was not the greatest composer, although he was a great genius. The popular Mozartian mythos (and made more popular by Peter Schaffer, lets not forget, who besmirched poor Salieri as thoroughly as that bitter queen Terrence McNally later besmirched Callas) casts him as a protean creative mind the likes of which the world had never before seen nor has seen ever since, but frankly, Mozart wrote many more ordinary orchestral works than great symphonies and many more lousy divertimenti than great chamber pieces. That said, he was the finest composer for the human voice, and his Figaro is the greatest staged work ever written, the most perfect opera, against which all others should be measured and none measures up--so much the better and more incredible that Le Nozze di Figaro is a comedy. Here, in the opera's second act, in which various confusions are taken for a ride and put back in the garage, is one of its loveliest quartets, "Signori, di fuori," ("My Lords and Ladies" - Figaro is trying to get a wedding started, etc.), which also contains what may be the most beautiful note in all music. Listen as the character of the piece changes around the 2:15 mark. Then, at around 2:38, as Figaro, La Contessa, and Susanna sing to the Count, you hear a soft bass figure in crescendo, and then at 2:46 a great swelling note deep in the bass. It then repeats itself at 3:02. Everyone else wishes they wrote that passage, but damn, bitches, you didn't.