Le nozze di Figaro: Italian–English Side-by-Side Libretto With Translation

I have completed a major new revision of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro on LibrettoArchive.

Figaro is one of the most important operas in the repertoire, but this was also one of the older editions on my site that had never received the same detailed editorial work as some of my newer editions. I decided it was time to go through it properly.

I reviewed the Italian and English texts line by line, comparing the translation closely with Lorenzo Da Ponte’s original. Some corrections were straightforward OCR mistakes. Others required looking carefully at older Italian expressions, stage directions, grammar, dramatic context, and the meaning of individual words.

A number of translation problems had remained in the English text for years. For example, qualche garbuglio si troverà had been translated as Figaro finding himself “in a turmoil,” although Bartolo is actually talking about finding some legal loophole or complication. Ch’ognora v’inganna became “trying to humiliate you” instead of “who always deceives you.” Restaci, in buon’ora was translated as “Stay for an hour or more,” although it means something closer to “Stay then, by all means.”

There were many smaller problems too: missing stage actions, actions added that were not in the Italian, incorrect speaker labels, punctuation problems, old OCR errors, omitted words, inconsistent typography, and places where the English changed the meaning more than it should.

Some corrections were quite small but important. “Susanna’s room” had become “the servants’ rooms.” “A march” had become “the wedding march.” Chi ’l direbbe? was translated as “Who says so?” instead of “Who would have thought it?” And in Figaro’s Act IV aria, the original image of weak reason “offering incense” to women called goddesses had disappeared completely from the English translation.

I also reviewed the Italian text itself, correcting OCR errors, accents, punctuation, spacing, headings, and stage directions. After that, I went through the complete libretto several more times to catch remaining problems and make the Italian and English sides consistent.

The goal was not to rewrite Da Ponte or produce an artificially modern translation. I wanted the English to remain readable while staying much closer to what the Italian actually says.

The newly revised Italian–English libretto is now available on LibrettoArchive:

Italian–English libretto

The opera is also available in other side-by-side editions:

• Italian–German

• Italian–French

The updated Italian–English paperback is available here:

Le nozze di Figaro on Amazon

You can also see a PDF preview before ordering:

PDF sample

And one more thing: if you bought an earlier edition of my Le nozze di Figaro book, I will be happy to send you a free copy of the newly revised edition. I appreciate the people who supported these books before this extensive revision was made, and I would like them to have the corrected version as well.