Bring in the New Year with Figaro. It's in German but this crackles, all sorts of underrateds in this production: heading the creative team is Joachim Hess and Hans Schmidt-Isserstedt (who kicks Karl Bohm's ass...), plus Heinz Blackenberg and Edith Mathis as the central couple.
There are, generally, three ways to play Mozart: like Rossini, like Brahms, and lize Mozart. The Brahms way (Kleiber, Bohm, Haitink, Gui), smooth legatos and thick textures, and it's lacking humor and good humor, it just lies on the page. Then there's the Rossini way (Gardiner, Abbado, Ostman, Currentzis), all clipped phrases and effervescence, which completely negates the drama and seriousness. There are other more obvious pratfalls like various ways of overdramatizing whose offenders we won't mention. Mozart is half staccato and half legato, half delicate piano and half dramatic fortes, half cantabile and half attaca. The da Ponte operas are infinite, and every adjective to describe them could as easily be applied to their opposites. I've heard at least thirty Figaros and maybe 20% seem like they consistently understand it: Walter, Busch, Giulini, Fricsay, Leinsdorf, and Levine. We can now safely add Schmidt-Isserstedt.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RPSyHfUSOc
(Note from 2025: My sense of Figaro has evolved somewhat. I have fallen back in with Erich Kleiber's reading, in spite of the smoothness and overpresent strings, the formal perfection makes it heavenly. I should have specified that Abbado's Figaro is far better than the vast majority of his Mozart. Karl Bohm has a bunch Mozart productions of live broadcasts that capture him in far more understanding spirit than his soporific studio recordings. On the list of who understood Figaro I should have probably included Solti and Davis too.
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