PERDONO takes its title and emotional center from one of the most charged moments in Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro: Count Almaviva’s plea for forgiveness. “Perdono! Perdono!” he asks the Countess, and, with almost unbearable grace, she grants it.

The work is less interested in retelling Mozart’s scene than in lingering inside it. I have always found this moment deeply moving, even as its dramatic logic leaves much unresolved. PERDONO gives space to what the Countess is not allowed to say directly in the opera: her anger, restraint, grief, dignity, and rage.

The piece was commissioned by the Atlantic Music Festival for its fifth-anniversary season and premiered by the Atlantic Music Festival Orchestra under the direction of Jonathan Schiffman. The opening draws from the first three notes of the Count’s plea, which also form a musical cryptogram spelling the initials of the commissioning organization: AMF.

The premiere was presented alongside a concert version of Le nozze di Figaro and Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 2, whose final gestures leave a faint trace in the work’s conclusion.

—SC