Anthony Holden: For its Mozart birthday festivities, Welsh National Opera puts on Figaro and opens some bubble wrap

[The Observer, 19 February 2006]

Figaro here, Figaro there... the famous complaint of Rossini's barber rings true in Mozart's 250th birthday year on a scale his creator, French playwright Caron de Beaumarchais, could never have dreamed of. Between David McVicar's recent new staging at Covent Garden and an imminent Opera North revival, Welsh National has joined the party with its gift-wrapped version of The Marriage of Figaro.