Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni

"Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni" ( _de. Fantasie über Themen aus den Opern von Wolfgang Amadues Mozart Die Hochzeit Des Figaro und Don Giovanni), S.697, nicknamed "Figaro Fantasy", is an incomplete operatic fantasy by Franz Liszt. Liszt began the work by the end of 1842, and he performed it at the latest in Berlin on 11 January 1843 [Editio Musica, Budapest. Plate no.: Z. 14 135, 1997. page 3] . However, it was never published. Liszt's manuscript is incomplete and contains no tempo indications, very few dynamics and articulation marks. The ending is some few bars from complete. Liszt probably tried out an improvisated solution in performance, judging by the rather insignificant lacunae.

Liszt based this piece on two arias from the opera "The Marriage of Figaro": "Non più andrai" and "Voi che sapete" (Act II), and the dance scene from the Act I finale of "Don Giovanni". The dramatic opening is a free paraphrase of "Non più andrai", transposed to A flat from the original B flat, followed by a more faithful arrangement of "Voi che sapete". The aria falls away to reveal the minuet from "Don Giovanni". In the opera, the minuet is in three themes. Liszt uses two of them individually, then he combines the third one with the others and parts of Figaro's aria. Concludingly, the Figaro aria is reused alongside themes from the minuet. As the ending is incomplete, the last bars of "Non più andrai" are suggestively used, as well as the concluding bars of the act.

In 1912, Breitkopf & Härtel published a greatly truncated version of the fantasy, heavily edited and paraphrased by Ferruccio Busoni. The full title of the edition was "Franz Liszt / Fantasie / über zwei Motive aus W. A Mozart's / Die Hochzeit des Figaro / nach dem fast vollendeten Originalmanuskript / ergänzt und Moriz Rosenthal zugeeignet / von Ferruccio Busoni / Erste Ausgabe 1912". Busoni did not consider the 15 pages of music devoted to "Don Giovanni" worthwhile, hence he eliminated it for his edition; it has even been suggested that Liszt never intended the minuet to be part of his fantasy and the manuscripts were shuffled together by accident. [Larry Sitsky," Busoni and the piano: the works, the writings, and the recordings", pages 235-236. Westport, Conn. and New York: Greenwood Press. 1986. ISBN 0-313-23671-2.] The edition remains secret about the great of Busoni's contribution, nor how much he omitted from the manuscript.

In later years, the Australian-born pianist and composer Leslie Howard has attempted to reconstruct the work as Liszt intended, and has also published and recorded the newly-recast work. His intention was to "publish... the whole of Liszt's Fantasy with an authenticity of text, supplying and clearly indicating the few bars... which are necessary to render the work performable."

The "Figaro Fantasy", as "completed" by Busoni, was performed extensively by himself, his student Egon Petri, and later championed by Vladimir Horowitz and Grigory Ginsburg. However, it has fallen out of the standard pianist repertoire. Stephen Hough and Jean-Yves Thibaudet still perform this work occasionally. Leslie Howard recorded his own version in 1996, as a part of his complete piano music recordings of Liszt.

References

* Kenneth Hamilton, "Liszt Fantasises — Busoni Excises: The Liszt-Busoni 'Figaro Fantasy'". Published in the "Journal of the American Liszt Society" Volume 30 (1991), pages 21-27.

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