Who sings Marriage of Figaro in Shawshank Redemption?

2 years ago

6 minutes

The aria that Andy Dufresne plays over the prison’s speakers is the canzonetta sull’aria, from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It is not just any aria because in this duet between the Countess Almaviva and her chambermaid Susanna, the Countess dictates a love letter to her unfaithful husband in order to set a trap for him and try to get him back. A letter of love and hope but also of cunning… three central themes in Frank Darabont’s The Escaped. Listening to this Mozart duet, each prisoner suddenly stops what he is doing. They all roll their eyes and ask themselves: Where did these women’s voices come from and what is this music?

As Andy Dufresne exults and the guards try to break down the office door to stop the music, it is as if all the walls of the prison collapse!

Soon the guards break down the door and Andy Dufresne is put in the hole for two weeks because of this insubordination. A gesture of revolt in music with Mozart, that Morgan Freeman summarizes as follows “These voices rose higher and further than any prisoner could have dreamed, it was like a wonderful bird that came to fly in our cages”.

What were the Italian ladies singing in Shawshank Redemption?

To this day I have no idea what those two Italian women were singing, and the truth is, I don’t want to know, some things are better left unsaid. I think they were singing about something so beautiful that it was impossible to put into words, and that’s why it made your heart flutter. I assure you, those voices lifted you higher and farther than anyone could have dreamed, living in such a gray place. It was as if a beautiful bird entered our dreary cage and made those walls disappear, and for a few moments every man in Shawshank felt free.

This text matches the voiceover of actor Morgan Freeman in this wonderful scene from the 1994 movie “Escape from Shawshank” based on a Stephen King story. The character recalls the magical moment it meant for the inmates of the fictional Shawshank prison to hear the voices of those “two Italian women” after the main character (Tim Robinson), using his privileged relationship with the bailiff, decides to send from his office to the prison yards the tune that has managed to lift you so high and so far.

Mozart – Marriage of Figaro

The music capable of such a feat in a prison for life imprisonment is the duettino Canzoneta sull’aria from Act III of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro, completed on April 29, 1786 and premiered only two days later at the Burgtheater in Vienna.

The libretto is based on Le marriage de Figaro by Beaumarchais, which was never performed in Vienna due to an express prohibition by Joseph II because of its criticism of the society of the time. For the same reason, the premiere of the opera in Vienna was preceded by bad omens, that Leopold, Mozart’s father, helped to feed assuring that Antonio Salieri and “his people” had Mozart as the target of all their intrigues and that they would not hesitate to move heaven and earth so that its premiere would be a fiasco.

But Leopold was wrong in his predictions. Le Nozze di Figaro was a resounding success from the very day of its premiere. Soon it was already famous and its performances followed one after the other in a large part of Europe. Two centuries later, one of its arias serves as the backdrop for a brief moment of redemption.
In the following version of the duettino, the “two Italian women” singing are Cecilia Bartoli and Renée Fleming.

Who is the opera singer in Shawshank Redemption?

The recording they used in the movie was made in 1968, many years later with Deutsche Oper Berlin Duettino conducted by Karl Bohm. The two “Italian” ladies were the German born Austrian lyric soprano Gundula Janowitz and her contemporary the Swiss soprano Edith Mathis.

Tim Robbins in the film The Shawshank Redemption, stars in one of those unforgettable scenes that is a total success of Frank Darabont’s direction. The central theme of the scene is the canzonetta sul’aria from Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. It is a prisoner who has gained the trust of everyone and, at one point, locks himself in a place in the prison administration from where he puts on a record player the canzonetta sul’aria and makes it play on all the loudspeakers for the rest of the prisoners to hear. Hardly anyone, or no one, knew what “those two Italians” were saying: ….

“good things don’t need to be understood. I guess they were singing about something so beautiful that cannot be expressed in words and that is precisely why it made your heart beat faster. I assure you that those voices lifted you higher and farther than anyone living in such a gray place could ever dream of. It was as if a beautiful bird had entered our drab cage and dissolved those walls and, for a few brief moments, even the last man in Shawshank felt free” ….

So, at the insistence that he turn “it” off, the prisoner turned up the volume to make it even louder. He didn’t mind the punishment.
The canzonetta sul’aria from the Marriage of Figaro is sung by Edith Mathis and Gundula Janowitz and, as is well known, composed by the genius Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

What opera song did they play in Shawshank Redemption?

There’s a wonderful scene in the classic film The Shawshank Redemption in which the wrongly imprisoned Andy Dufresne (Tim Robbins), in an act of defiance against prison authorities, plays the letter duet from The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeakers, creating a sense of euphoria throughout the prison yard.

Why did Andy Dufresne play the music?

He Played music to instill hope and a sense of freedom into the minds of the prisoners. He could have listened to the music alone. He took the risk for a greater good. You cannot bound music in a room when you are in the right position.

What does Figaro mean in the opera?

scheming Spanish barber

[ (fig-uh-roh) ] A scheming Spanish barber who appears as a character in eighteenth-century French plays. The operas The Marriage of Figaro, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and The Barber of Seville, by Gioacchino Rossini, are about Figaro. GOOSES.

Is Shawshank Redemption true story?

The Shawshank Redemption is based on a Stephen King novella

The Shawshank Redemption isn’t based on a true story, and Frank Darabont didn’t come up with it by himself, either. The movie’s based on Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption, a novella first published in Stephen King’s Different Seasons.

Is there a Shawshank Redemption 2?

MIDDLETON (CAP) – Castle Rock Entertainment has confirmed reports that it will make a sequel to its beloved 1994 film The Shawshank Redemption, chronicling the further adventures of characters Andy Dufresne and Ellis Boyd “Red” Redding, to be filmed partially in Massachusetts.