The Marriage of Figaro (1949 film)

For the silent film, see The Marriage of Figaro (1920 film).

The Marriage of Figaro (German: Figaros Hochzeit) is a 1949 East German musical film directed by Georg Wildhagen and starring Angelika Hauff, Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender and Sabine Peters.^[1] It was based on the opera The Marriage of Figaro by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, which was itself based on the play The Marriage of Figaro by Pierre Beaumarchais. The film was made by DEFA, the state production company of East Germany, in their Babelsberg Studio and the nearby Babelsberg Park. It sold 5,479,427 tickets.^[2]

The Marriage of Figaro
Directed by	Georg Wildhagen
Written by	Pierre Beaumarchais (play) Lorenzo Da Ponte (original libretto) Georg Wildhagen
Produced by	Walter Lehmann [de]
Starring	Angelika Hauff Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender Sabine Peters Elsa Wagner
Cinematography	Eugen Klagemann Karl Plintzner
Edited by	Hildegard Tegener
Music by	Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Production company	DEFA
Distributed by	Progress Film
Release date	25 November 1949 (1949-11-25)
Running time	107 minutes
Country	East Germany
Language	German

The production used a German text instead of the Italian original. The recitatives were replaced with dialogue spoken by the actors. Except for Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender as Figaro and Mathieu Ahlersmeyer as Count Almaviva, the singing parts were supplied by opera singers.^[3] During Figaro's aria "Non più andrai" (In German: "Nun vergiss leises Flehn"), a battle scene from Veit Harlan's 1942 film The Great King is shown.

Cast

• Angelika Hauff as Susanna, sung by Erna Berger
• Willi Domgraf-Fassbaender as Figaro
• Sabine Peters as Countess Rosina, sung by Tiana Lemnitz
• Mathieu Ahlersmeyer as Count Almaviva
• Elsa Wagner as Marcellina, sung by Margarete Klose
• Victor Janson as Dr. Bartolo, sung by Eugen Fuchs
• Alfred Balthoff as Basilio, sung by Paul Schmidtmann
• Franz Weber as Don Curzio, sung by Kurt Reimann [de]
• Ernst Legal as Antonio, sung by Willi Sahler
• Willi Puhlmann as Cherubino, sung by Anneliese Müller
• Katharina Mayberg as Barbarina, sung by Elfriede Hingst
• Theodor Vogeler [de] as Scribe (not a role in the opera)