Raquelle

Message from the
General Director
& CEO
If you don’t know the name Pierre
Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, don’t
worry, you know the operas adapted
from his plays, The Barber of Seville by
Rossini and Mozart’s The Marriage of
Figaro. The plays are sometimes revived,
with good reason, but, like many literary
works, their opera incarnations have
outpaced them.
Beaumarchais was quite a character, and
his Marriage, with its alternate title,
A Mad Day, caused a great stir at its
premiere in 1778. Seen as an attack on the
privileged aristocracy, it shocked even Louis
XVI and has often been cited as one of the
inspirations, by the literate rising middle
class, for the French Revolution. The play
survived the censors, and Beaumarchais
even became a spy for France, but Figaro
had done its seed work for political action.
Mozart and his great librettist, Lorenzo
Da Ponte toned down the politics when
they adapted the piece in 1786 (only three
ominous years before the Revolution),
concentrating on the intensely personal,
rather than the overtly political.
They did keep a key idea in the plot, the
“droit du seigneur,” a primary indictment
against the idea of masters controlling
servants. This medieval “right of the lord,”
conferred on the lord the custom of
sleeping with the bride of any of his vassals.
Most research into the custom shows it was
probably, at worst, part of what was known
as a record of redemption paid by the vassal
to the lord to avoid his supposed rights.
By the 18th century, this old idea was
discredited, as it seems to be in Figaro, but
it heats up the plot and keeps it boiling.
The Marriage of Figaro was the first of
three collaborations between Mozart and
Da Ponte, (who led as colourful a life as
Beaumarchais, hence the attraction to his
work). Figaro is their sunniest opera with
the later two, Don Giovanni and Così fan
tutte, darker in tone. Written for Vienna,
it was a success, but not really the hit which
Mozart was always hoping for, but fitfully
getting. However, it was a smash in Prague.
“Everywhere Figaro” is how Mozart
described it, noting that the opera’s
tunes were hummed by everyone, from
chambermaids to coachmen to the nobility
– which was the main audience for opera.
Figaro was one of the first operas to reach
out to a wider audience, with the middle
class becoming the main opera-going public
by the early 19th century.
Many recent productions have updated
Le nozze di Figaro, most notably one set
in Trump Tower, but the parallels are
awkward, since the world of Figaro isn’t
simply one of paid servants and rich bosses,
but a tight inter-related community
revolving around a long-gone aristocracy.
Whereas Beaumarchais’ play seeks to
subvert the aristocracy, Mozart’s opera
embraces it and sees it as fodder to skew
the human foibles of the privileged class
with his sublime and comic music –
truly making it an opera of the people.
Larry Desrochers
General Director & CEO
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