Introduction

There's a wonderful scene in The Shawshank Redemption in which a prisoner, in an act of defiance against the prison authorities, plays the letter duet from The Marriage of Figaro over the loudspeakers, creating a sense of euphoria throughout the prison yard. A fellow inmate named Red provides a voice-over narration, and says, "I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don't want to know. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful it can't be expressed in words, and makes your heart ache because of it."

He was, of course, only partly right. Like all great opera composers, Mozart recognized the importance of a good libretto, and in Lorenzo Da Ponte he had found an artistic soul mate capable of inspiring him to new heights. The Marriage of Figaro continues to delight and captivate us over two hundred years after its first performance precisely because it represents the perfect fusion of words and music.

Much has been made of the fact that Mozart and Da Ponte toned down the satire of Beaumarchais' revolutionary play in order to make it acceptable to the Emperor, who had the absolute power to censor any stage work of which he did not approve. However, although Da Ponte assured Emperor Joseph that he had removed the offensive passages, it is more likely that he had done what any good librettist would have done to this play by removing the superfluous political speeches in order to move the action along. In any event, there was a long history of upstart servants in operas of the time, as in Pergolesi's La Serva Padrona, in which a servant tricks her master into marrying her. Furthermore, the Emperor was not the target himself and probably would have enjoyed a comedy that satirized the lower nobility.

In his book Mozart and the Enlightenment, opera director Nicholas Till has argued that the real theme of this opera is not social class but the institution of marriage, reflecting the concept of Enlightenment thinking that marriage should be based not on financial considerations nor on romantic infatuation but rather on a feeling of mutual understanding and respect between a man and a woman. Mozart himself had married a woman of limited financial means, over the objection of his father, and appeared to enjoy such a relationship with his wife. Noting that the Count and Countess have a marriage in need of restoration, Till goes onto say, "The marriage of Figaro and Susanna is a portrait of a marriage that will be stable and secure, based upon freedom and true love, firmly rooted in sound understanding and proper contractual commitments, and free of romantic or sentimental delusion."

This opera is also an affirmation of the dignity of all people. Figaro and Susanna may be servants, but they are, above all, human beings with feelings. There is no musical distinction between the high-born characters and the servants. As Red observed, however, there is something in this music that goes far beyond anything that is expressed in Da Ponte’s words. Listening to the hymn-like music with which the Countess forgives her errant husband, one might reflect on the words that Peter Schaffer put in Salieri’s mouth in his play Amadeus. Realizing he is speaking to an audience two centuries in the future, the composer feels safe in making an allusion to the final scene of The Marriage of Figaro: "What shall I say to you who will one day hear this last act for yourselves? You will – because whatever else shall pass away, this must remain."

The Characters

Descriptions in italics are from Beaumarchais' notes.

Count Almaviva (ahl-ma-VEE-vah) baritone – The depravity of his morals does not detract from the grace of his manners.

Figaro (FEE-gah-ro) baritone – His valet; possessing good sense seasoned with gaiety and sallies of wit with no element of caricature.

Countess Almaviva (a.k.a. Rosina) – soprano – The count's wife.Torn between two conflicting emotions, she should display only a restrained tenderness and very moderate degree of resentment, above all nothing which might impair her amiable and virtuous character in the eyes of the audience.

Susanna soprano – The Countess' maid and Figaro's fiance. She is a resourceful, intelligent, and lively young woman, but she has none of the almost brazen gaiety characteristic of some of our young actresses who play maidservants.

Doctor Bartolo (BAHR-to-lo) bass – A doctor of medicine; later revealed to be Figaro's father.

Don Basilio (Dohn ba-ZEE-lee-oh) tenor – A music teacher.

Cherubino (kay-roo-BEE-no) mezzo-soprano/trouser role – A young page. The basis of his character is an undefined and restless desire. He is entering adolescence with no understanding of what is happening to him. In fact, he is what every mother would wish her own son to be even though he might give her much cause for suffering.

Antonio bass – A gardener; Susanna's uncle

Don Curzio (KOOR-tsee-oh) tenor – A lawyer

Marcellina (mar-chel-LEE-nah) soptrano – An older woman, later revealed to be Figaro's mother. She is a woman of intelligence and of naturally lively temperament.

Barbarina (bar-bar-EE-na) soptrano – Antonio's daughter

The Story

The Marriage of Figaro is based on the sequel to The Barber of Seville, whose plot would have been familiar to Mozart's audience through the popular adaptation of that work by Paisiello (Italian opera composer). It tells how Count Almaviva, with the help of the town's barber and jack-of-all trades, Figaro, won the hand of Rosina over the objection of her guardian Bartolo, who had wanted to marry her himself.

The Marriage of Figaro takes place a few years later. The Almavivas are married, but the debonair Count has hardly been a model of marital fidelity. In the meantime, Figaro, apparently tired of free-lancing, has accepted employment with the Count as a sort of household manager. He has become engaged to Susanna, Rosina's lady in waiting.

The Overture:

The overture to this opera contains no musical quotes from the opera itself. Its frantic pace, however, perfectly captures the mood of the play, whose subtitle was "La Folle Journee" (a day's madness).

ACT I: Figaro and Susanna's bedroom

The curtain opens on a half-furnished room which is to become the bedroom of the soon-to-be-wed Susanna and Figaro. In a duet exemplifying the difference between masculine and feminine attitudes, Figaro is consumed with measuring the room while Susanna sings about her beautiful hat. This duet is followed by a brief dialogue between the two in a style known as secco (dry) recitative: sung speech accompanied by harpsichord, which is used to facilitate rapid plot transitions. Susanna is unpleasantly surprised to learn that this room, adjacent to the Almavivas' quarters, is to be their bedroom. In the duet "Se a caso madama," Figaro points out how convenient the room is--the Countess can ring the bell for Susanna ("din din") while the count can ring for Figaro ("don don"). Having great fun with the sounds, Mozart and Da Ponte have Susanna echo the "don don" to remind Figaro that the count could summon her just as easily. She continues to taunt Figaro with these sounds as he  begins to catch her drift.

In a passage of secco recitative, Susanna provides additional details. The Count has been attempting to seduce her, using the unscrupulous Basilio as his emissary. It turns out that the count had recently abolished the droit du seigneur, the right of a feudal lord to have sex with any bride in his employ on the night of her wedding, a custom which may have more to do with folklore than with historical fact. As Susanna's wedding is approaching, however, he has begun to have second thoughts.

Susanna leaves and Figaro, alone on stage, sings his solo aria (introduced by a secco passage), "Se vuol ballare": "If my master wants to sing a ballad, I'll play the tune." The opening theme is accompanied in part by pizzicato notes on the strings, suggesting the melody that Figaro is playing.

Figaro exits, and Dr. Bartolo and Marcellina enter. As we will learn shortly, Figaro had offered to marry Marcellina if he were to default on a loan, and she intends to enforce the contract. In his aria "La vendetta," which has been described as a parody of the revenge aria from the opera seria genre, Bartolo expresses his desire to get revenge on the man who helped the Count steal Rosina away from him.

Bartolo exits, leaving Marcellina, and Susanna enters.With mock politeness the two women ridicule each other, each insisting that the other exit first. Finally, Marcellina does exit, just in time to miss the entrance of the page, Cherubino, a young man who has a crush on any woman he sees, an ardor which he expresses in his aria "Non so piu." The breathless pace of this aria, along with the implied auto-eroticism,seems to suggest the impatience of adolescence.

The Count enters, and Cherubino hides behind a chair. The Count asks Susanna for a clandestine meeting, but when he hears Basilio approaching, he decides to hide behind the same chair. In the nick of time, Cherubino jumps into the chair, and Susanna covers him with a cloak.

Basilio enters and, slyly suggesting that Susanna is having an affair with Cherubino, asks why she would not prefer the master to the page. He further suggests that Cherubino has his eye on the Countess. Angered, the Count reveals his presence and, in a wonderful comic trio, the count, Basilio, and Susanna try to make the best of an awkward situation. In describing how he found Cherubino hiding under a cloak earlier in the day, the Count lifts the cloak under which Cherubino is currently hiding and is amazed to find the same thing happening again. He is embarrassed to realize that the page has heard his supposedly private conversation with Susanna. As if things were not crazy enough, Figaro enters with a chorus of peasants. As part of the mind game that he is playing with the Count, he directs them in singing the praises of the Count for abolishing the droit. Figaro asks the Count to perform the wedding at once, but the latter makes an excuse to delay.

Almaviva realizes that Cherubino knows too much to be dismissed outright, so he decides instead to promote him, making him an officer in his regiment, and orders him to join the regiment at once. After secretly telling Cherubino to stick around, Figaro launches into the aria"Non piu andrai," in which he warns the page of the hard life that awaits him in the military. Mozart, never missing the chance to add a comic touch, conjures up an entire military band in the background as the aria concludes and the curtain falls.

At the rehearsal for the first performance, the orchestra burst into a spontaneous ovation at the conclusion of this aria. After all, nothing this magnificent had ever before been heard on the operatic stage. They did not have to wait very long to hear music of equal power.

The Countess' boudoir

The Countess is alone on stage. A relatively lengthy orchestral passage introduces "Porgi Amor," her lament over the loss of her husband's affections. This number is labeled as a "cavatina" in the score, indicating a short melodic passage less developed than a full aria. But with barely four lines of text to work with, Mozart magically builds sympathy for the Countess and reminds us that marital infidelity is not a victimless crime.

Mozart then employs a lengthy recitative to move the plot along. Susanna enters and, at the Countess' request, fills her in on the details of the Count's advances toward her. Figaro enters and, together with the women, devises a plan to divert the Count from his attempted seduction and to shame him into abandoning his adulterous ways. Figaro will write an anonymous letter to Basilio warning of a fictitious meeting between the Countess and a strange man in the garden. In the meantime, Susanna will agree to meet the Count in the garden, but instead, Cherubino will keep the appointment, dressed in women's clothing. Singing an excerpt from his "Se vuol ballare," Figaro reiterates that he is still in control of the situation as he exits.

Conveniently, Cherubino now enters, and the women persuade him to sing a song that he has written. Labeled a "canzona" (a simple song), "Voi che sapete" is simple and direct in form. Since Cherubino is supposed to be singing rather than speaking at this point, the style is rather formal, in contrast to his earlier aria in which he expressed his own personality. Susanna accompanies him on the guitar.

The women make their plans for Cherubino's costume. As they are doing this, the Countess happens to look at his military commission and notices that the Count has acted in such haste that he failed to affix his seal. Measuring him for an outfit, Susanna sings the playful "Venite inginocchiatvei," praising his good looks. Susanna goes off in search of a ribbon. Suddenly, the Count knocks at the door, and Cherubino hides in the closet. Hearing a noise in the closet, the Count asks who is there, and the Countess tells him that it is Susanna. In the meantime, Susanna has entered unobserved by the others.

The argument between the Count and Countess now develops into a trio, "Susanna, or via sortite." The Count orders Susanna to come out of the closet, the Countess tells her not to open the door (remember: it is Cherubino, not Susanna, in the closet). Susanna, still unseen by the others, expresses her fear of the impending scandal. After the trio ends, the Count goes off to get some tools to pry the door open, taking the Countess with him to keep her from freeing her supposed lover and locking the room behind them.

In their absence, Cherubino jumps out of the window and Susanna takes his place in the closet. The Countess, not knowing the truth, admits that Cherubino is in the closet. She also reveals that Figaro had written the bogus letter about her alleged affair.

The next twenty minutes, the finale to Act II, represent Mozart at the height of his genius. The music here does not slow the story down for the sake of plot development. Rather, it builds the sense of confusion and moves the plot along as duets morph into trios, quartets, and finally a septet.

The Count approaches the closet, sword drawn, over his wife's desperate cries. When he opens the door, both are equally amazed to find Susanna. In an aside, Susanna tells the Countess of the page's escape. Concluding that the Countess was simply playing a joke, the Count asks for forgiveness, but, enjoying the fact that they now seem to have the upper hand, the women mock him.

With no break in the music, Figaro enters, announcing that the band is ready to perform at the wedding. The Count, however, has not yet been defeated. He asks Figaro about the letter, and, not knowing that the Countess had given away the plot, he denies knowing anything about it, while the two women try to signal to him that the Count already knows the truth. Figaro, Susanna, and the Countess join in unison to ask that the wedding take place at once, while the Count keeps repeating Marcellina's name to himself, wondering why she has not yet come to claim Figaro for herself.

Just as Figaro seems caught in his own lies, Antonio (the gardener) enters angrily, complaining that someone has damaged his garden by jumping into it from the balcony. Though he would have had no reason to jump, Figaro claims that he was the one the gardener had seen, even feigning a limp. Antonio confronts Figaro with the commission paper, which Cherubino had dropped in his haste. With some prompting from the women, Figaro reveals that the lack of a seal is the reason it was given to him to hold.

Figaro does not have the upper hand for long. Marcellina, Don Basilio and Doctor Bartolo enter, demanding that the Count enforce Figaro's pledge to marry Marcellina if he defaulted on his loan. The older characters exult in their apparent triumph, the younger ones react in despair, and the seven voices, each with its own purpose, join in a thrilling up-tempo ensemble as the curtain falls.

ACT II: A Hall in the Castle

The act begins with some brief recitative as the Count, Susanna and the Countess separately continue their intrigues. Susanna and the Count are left alone, and the Count continues his advances. Their conversation leads into the duet "Crudel! Perche finora." In a parody of Courtly Love traditions, the Count rebukes Susanna for her "cruelty." Despite the power that the Count has over Susanna, he poses as a disappointed romantic lover. Mozart and Da Ponte have some fun with the interchange here as the rhythm of the music induces Susanna to make some Freudian slips. For example, when she is apparently agreeing to a secret meeting with the Count, she first says "no" when she should say "yes" and then, with perfect symmetry, says "yes" when she should say "no," much to the Count's chagrin. As she leaves, she encounters Figaro, and the Count overhears her tell Figaro that he has already won his case. Angered, the Count sings his big aria, "Hai gia vinta la causa," in which he declares his intention to be avenged on his upstart valet.

Marcellina, Bartolo, and Figaro enter, along with a stuttering lawyer, Don Curzio. The latter insists that Figaro must honor his contract and marry Marcellina, but Figaro plays his last trump card--he cannot marry without the consent of his parents and, since he was kidnapped in infancy, he does not know their identity. As he describes the items found on his person at the time, and a mark branded on his arm--a spatula--Marcellina recognizes that he is her long lost son born out-of-wedlock. Moreover, Bartolo is the father. This recognition leads into the celebrated sextet "Riconosci in questo amplesso," the number which was Mozart's favorite. As Marcellina reaches to embrace her son and the other characters express their amazement and frustration, Susanna enters. Seeing the embrace, she assumes that he has abandoned her for Marcellina, and she slaps him. Finally, Figaro is able to get a word in edgewise and tells her what has happened. In a wonderful exchange that depends on the music for its comic effect, Susanna polls each of the assembled people present to confirm that Marcellina is Figaro's mother and that Bartolo is his father. The newfound family sings happily of their joy, while the Count and lawyer sulk. Now that the secret of his past escapade has come into the open, Bartolo proposes marriage to Marcellina, and she immediately accepts.

The Countess enters, and after lamenting the fact that she has fallen so low as to be dependent on her servant's help, she embarks on one of the greatest arias in the entire soprano repertoire, "Dove sono" ("Where have they gone, those beautiful moments?"), a touching, heartfelt lament describing the genuine suffering of a woman forced to realize that her husband no longer loves her. Susanna enters and, with the Countess, they decide that Susanna will write a love letter, which the Countess will dictate, to the Count. This is the "Letter Duet" that so moved the inmates of Shawshank prison.

Barbarina enters with a chorus of young women (along with the disguised Cherubino) to serenade the Countess. The Count enters and immediately unmasks the young man. However, Barbarina averts the punishment that the Count threatens by reminding him that, when she played along with his physical advances toward her, he promised her anything she would ask. She thus asks for Cherubino as a husband. Figaro enters, and the Count catches him in more lies, from which he is rescued by the sound of marching music, signaling the beginning of the evening's wedding festivities. Two peasant girls again praise the Count for abolishing the droit. The music changes to a slow minuet, which accompanies the remaining dialogue. Susanna slips the Count the aforementioned letter. Almaviva tells everyone to celebrate, and the chorus picks up the peasant girls' melody.

The Garden

The curtain opens on Barbarina, who is looking for the pin which the Count had asked her to return to Susanna as confirmation that he had received her letter (L'ho perduta"). Figaro enters, followed by Marcellina. He manages to get the unsuspecting girl to tell him about the pin, and he suspects that Susanna may be complying with the Count's wishes after all. In despair, he turns to his mother, but she chooses to side with Susanna out of feminine solidarity. She has clearly grown in character from the desperate old woman we saw in the first act. In Beaumarchais' words, "If the actress who plays the part can rise with a proper proud defiance to the moral heights of the third act, after the recognition scene, she will add greatly to the interest of the work."

Figaro plans to catch Susanna with the Count, and he comes forward to address the audience with a complaint about women's infidelity ("Aprite un po' quegli'occhi"). This is wonderful comic aria, with rapid-fire dialogue in the style of a patter song.

Susanna playfully decides to string Figaro along. She sings to herself the aria "Deh vieni," asking her lover to come to her. Figaro believes she is waiting for the Count.

The opera's finale consists of about twenty minutes of continuous music, as Cherubino, Figaro, and the Count woo Susanna and the Countess, who are disguised as each other. Believing he has caught the Countess with another man, the Count calls for his servants to come, bearing arms. Susanna, still in the guise of the Countess, begs forgiveness.

The Count angrily refuses to forgive the Countess despite the pleas of the others. The real Countess enters from the opposite direction and, with an angelic voice, offers to obtain their pardon. Humiliated, the Count turns to his wife and asks for forgiveness. The Countess' words of forgiveness float over the company and are echoed by the others, saying, "Let us all be happy." While the words of forgiveness relate to this specific situation, the music takes us to another sphere.

The chorus and principals conclude by celebrating love and pleasure, and they call on everyone assembled to run off and join the fun as the curtain falls.

Mozart

Of all the great composers, perhaps none has been the subject of more romantic speculation than Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. A few years ago, in the film Amadeus, Hollywood presented us with a Mozart for our own age – an irreverent, uncouth young man with an innate and inexplicable gift for composing immortal music. In the Peter Schafer play upon which the film was based, it was clear that what we were seeing was a caricature of the composer as filtered through the deranged mind of his rival, Antonio Salieri (also a caricature), though many film audiences have assumed it to be a historically accurate biography of the composer.

Mozart was a keen student of music theory, aware of the effects of various harmonies and key changes. He also was a devout Catholic who drew inspiration from the rituals of the church. As for Mozart’s vulgarity, much of which can be confirmed from his letters, we need to remember that in the eighteenth century scatological humor and sexual frankness were much more acceptable than they were to become later. Rumors of Mozart's sexual affairs are unsubstantiated, and the erotic letters we do have are addressed to his wife.

But even if we strip away the myths, one indisputable fact remains: Mozart was clearly one of the greatest creative geniuses the world has ever known. In a lifetime just short of thirty-six years he revolutionized Western music.

Mozart was born in Salzburg (not yet part of Austria) 16 on January 27, 1756, the son of a professional musician, Leopold Mozart. Both he and his sister were child prodigies, and they quickly attracted attention throughout Europe. In 1781, after struggling for some time to make a living, he relocated to the cultural capital of the Germanspeaking world, Vienna. Here he was able to find a wider audience for his works, eventually landing a post in the court of Emperor Joseph II.

Though he had written a number of operas in his teen years, it was in 1781 that the young composer first began to write the works which would bring him immortality, beginning with Idomeneo, which was followed by The Abduction from the Seraglio, the opera that led to a legendary exchange between emperor and composer: "Too monstrous for our ears, and monstrous many notes, my dear Mozart." Mozart responded, "Exactly as many as necessary, your Majesty."

Whether or not this dialogue actually took place, it does illustrate the fact that the young Mozart was writing with a complexity that was new to Viennese audiences.

In 1783, realizing that the German opera company had produced only one work of value – the aforementioned Abduction – Emperor Joseph disbanded it in favor of a new company to be devoted to the production of Italian opera. Salieri, the official court composer, invited a promising young Italian poet, Lorenzo Da Ponte, to court so the two men could collaborate on Italian operas. However, in one of those great ironic twists that makes music history so fascinating, when their opera Il Ricco d'un giorno flopped, Salieri blamed his librettist and swore that he would never work with him again. This left the field open for Da Ponte to work instead with Mozart. All that was needed was an appropriate subject, and when the composer suggested an adaptation of the hottest play in Europe – Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro – Da Ponte jumped at the chance.

As mentioned earlier, the idea was a hard sell at court. The play itself had been banned, but when Da Ponte showed the Emperor the libretto, from which he had removed the more overtly political passages, the latter rapidly agreed to the performance. The battle, however, was not over. During the rehearsal process, a number of singers, resentful of the upstart composer, sought to sabotage the opera through poor singing. But when Joseph, a devoted and perceptive opera fan, got wind of the conspiracy, he quickly put an end to it.

Premiering May 1, 1786, the opera was an instantaneous sensation, but not a lasting one. Unaccustomed to the complexity of Mozart's ensembles, the Vienna audiences soon turned their attention to Martin Soler's Una cosa rara, ironically, another work for which Da Ponte had written the libretto. The two men were to collaborate on two more operas – Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte – before going their separate ways. Mozart went on to write one more opera seria, La Clemenza del Tito, and the celebrated German singspiel, Die Zauberflote (The Magic Flute).

At the height of his creative powers, however, the young composer was struck by a disease which his biographers have been unable to identify, though few take seriously the rumor that he was poisoned. He died December 5, 1791, just weeks short of his thirty-sixth birthday, leaving his Requiem unfinished. In accord with funeral practices of the time, he was buried in an unmarked grave. Mozart does not need a stone monument, however. His works are certainly enough of a monument for any man.

Lorenzo Da Ponte

Though he is best known as a writer of opera libretti (lyrics), Lorenzo Da Ponte's life itself could well provide the subject of an opera for some enterprising composer and librettist. Born March 10, 1749 in the Jewish ghetto of Ceneda, Italy under the name Emanuel Conegliano, he acquired the name under which he is now known upon conversion to Catholicism in conjunction with his widowed father's second marriage.

Recognized early as a gifted student, Da Ponte realized that the best way to obtain a liberal education in his day was to study for the priesthood (he apparently went as far as to be ordained), though he had no intention of serving in that capacity (or, for that matter, of adopting a celibate lifestyle). In fact, prior to his move to Vienna in 1781, his addictive gambling and affairs with married women were well known.

Vienna at that time was a true cultural center. Emperor Joseph II was especially devoted to Italian opera, and he had worked to bring the finest creators and performers of that genre to his court. Da Ponte was appointed poet to the Italian theatre, and he soon was writing libretti for such major composers as Martin y Soler and Antonio Salieri, and Mozart.

The ensuing years found him often on the move, sometimes a step ahead of his creditors. With his common-law wife Nancy, he moved to England and later to the United States, where he spent his remaining years as a merchant, bookseller, and professor of Italian at Columbia University. He devoted much of his time to promoting Italian opera in the United States. He was greatly encouraged in his endeavors by scholar and poet Clement Moore of "The Night Before Christmas" fame. Da Ponte eloquently expressed his theory of opera as follows: "The success of an opera depends, first of all, on the poet… I think that poetry is the door to music, which can be very handsome, and much admired for its exterior, but nobody can see its internal beauties, if the door is wanting." Some critics have sought to denigrate the importance of Da Ponte in the creation of Mozart’s operas, dismissing him as a mere versifier, pointing out how flat the libretti appear on the page without Mozart's music. It would be more accurate to say that he undoubtedly recognized what the rest of the world was soon to discover: that Mozart was an incomparable genius who could turn the plainest of prose into great music. It is fair to say that the two men brought out the best in each other.

Beaumarchais

"I've been diplomat, acrobat, teacher of etiquette/ Student and swordsman, spy and musician/Satirist, pessimist, surgeon and Calvinist/Spanish economist, clockmaker, pharmacist"--thus Figaro describes himself in Corigliano and Hoffman'sGhosts of Versailles, and like the self-proclaimed "factotum" (general handyman) of Seville described in Rossini and Sterbini's Barber of Seville, he might as well have been describing Beaumarchais himself. In fact, anyone who reads the biography of Beaumarchais must inevitably surmise that Figaro was intended as a projection of his creator, the man of humble birth mingling as an equal with the aristocracy. In fact, it is has been suggested that the name Figaro is a pun on the author's birth-name, Caron, Figaro being fils-Caron (son of Caron).

Beaumarchais was born January 24, 1732 under the name Pierre-Augustin Caron, the son of a Parisian watchmaker. Working as an apprentice to his father, he invented a new mechanism that vastly improved watches’ accuracy. This brought him to the attention of the Court, where he again demonstrated his inventiveness by improving the pedal mechanisms of the harp.

His popularity at Court led him to become involved in a number of diplomatic missions. Most significantly, he was instrumental in persuading the French government to back the American Revolution.

Beaumarchais' literary career began in 1767 with a play called Eugenie, a colossal flop. However, in 1775 his play with songs, The Barber of Seville, dubbed as a "comic opera,"brought him instant acclaim. His battles over royalties for this work were instrumental in assuring authors the right to profit from their endeavors. He followed this with The Marriage of Figaro, which was first performed in 1784 after a prolonged battle with the censors, and an opera libretto Tarare (1787), with Mozart's rival Salieri.

Throughout his life, Beaumarchais had an incredible knack for being in the right place at the right time, combined with some amazing luck as well, which enabled him to escape the reign of terror which followed the French Revolution in the 1790s, and he died peacefully in bed in 1799.

The Saga of Figaro

While the characters in the Figaro plays sprang entirely from the imagination of Beaumarchais, they seem to have taken on a life of their own. Beaumarchais himself wrote three dramas about them, all of which were adapted into operas. Giovanni Paisiello wrote a highly successful adaptation of The Barber of Seville in 1782, though it was overshadowed by Gioachino Rossini's 1816 version. Apparently, no one else has dared comparison with Mozart by composing a second Marriage of Figaro.

The popularity of both the play and Mozart's opera led Beaumarchais to write another sequel, La Mere Coupable (The Guilty Mother), which takes place several years after the others and depicts the lives of the out-of-wedlock children of both the Count and Countess. La Mere Coupable had to wait till the twentieth century for an operatic adaptation, by the French composer Darius Milhaud. In 1991 John Corigliano and William M. Hoffman (librettist) set out to compose a new version of this play but instead turned it into a play-within- a-play, in which the ghosts of several prominent figures of the French Revolutionary period gather to watch a play which Beaumarchais is in the process of creating to amuse Marie Antoinette. In this highly imaginative work, the ghosts actually interact with the characters in the drama.

Jules Massenet's spin-off Cherubin (1905) describes the further adventures of Cherubino independent of the other characters. Other spinoffs include The Divorce of Figaro by the German composer Giselher, and Rosina by American composer Hiram Titus and librettist Barbara Field, a somewhat feminist take on the story in which the Countess runs away from the Count to live with an artist. And when Peter Schickele wanted to write an opera parody in the guise of his fictional alter-ego, P.D.Q. Bach, he turned to Mozart's characters, the result being The Abduction of Figaro (the title itself combining two Mozart works), which also included a character named "Donald Giovanni" and an older couple named Papageno and Mamageno.

The most notable descendent of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, however, was one which did not use the same characters but sought rather to capture the spirit of the earlier opera with characters modeled on those of Mozart and Da Ponte. That opera is Richard Strauss and Hugo Von Hoffmanstahl's Der Rosenkavalier (1911), which tells the story of a noblewoman neglected by her husband who takes solace in the arms of an adolescent page who, like Cherubino, is a trouser role (a woman playing a male character). Through the character of the Marschallin, the two men created one of the greatest characters of twentieth-century opera, a woman rivaling Mozart's Countess in nobility, and in the quietly understated final scene of that opera, in which she graciously relinquishes her lover to a younger woman, Strauss achieves the nearly impossible task of creating music as sublime as the final scene of Mozart's opera.

Bibliography

Carter, Tim. W. A. Mozart: The Marriage of Figaro. Cambridge

Opera Handbook. Cambridge, England: 1987.

Cox, Cynthia. The Real Figaro: The Extraordinary Career of    Caron de Beaumarchais. New York: Coward-McCann, 1962.

“First Night.” www.Snopes.com/Weddings/Customs/Drot.htm.

Griffith, Katherine. "Figaro's Perpetual Motion." In The Opera News Book of "Figaro." Ed. Frank Merkling. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1967: 16-30.

Harris, Robert. What to Listen for in Mozart. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1997.

Hodges, Sheila. Lorenzo Da Ponte: The Life and Times of Mozart's Librettist. London: Granada, 1985.

Hughes, Spike. Famous Mozart Operas. Revised Second Edition. New York: Dover Publishers, 1972.

Lingg, Ann M. "The Battle of Figaro." In The Opera News Book of "Figaro." Ed. Frank Merkling. New York: Dodd, Mead, and Co., 1967: 75-80.

Marek, George R. Opera as Theater. New York: Harper and Row, 1962.

Moberly, R. B. Three Mozart Operas. London: Victor Gallanca Ltd, 1967.

Osborne, Charles. The Complete Operas of Mozart: A Critical Guide. New York: Atheneum, 1978.

Robinson, Paul. Opera and Ideas: From Mozart to Strauss. New York: Harper and Row, 1985.

Rosselli, John. The Life of Mozart. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press, 1998.