The Marriage of Figaro

Le nozze di Figaro, Anonymous watercolour.

The Marriage of Figaro, or the Day of Madness (It. Le nozze di Figaro, ossia la folle giornata, K. 492) is an opera in four acts composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart in 1785-1786 to an Italian libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte. First perfomed in Vienna's Burgtheater on May 1, 1786, it ranks as one of Mozart's crowning operatic achievements. Figaro (a beloved operatic character who appears also in Rossini's Barber of Seville) is attempting to cleverly thwart the machinations of Count Almaviva, who wishes to seduce Figaro's fiancée Susanna before their wedding night.

The original story for Mozart's opera came from a 1784 French play by Pierre Beaumarchais. Due to its mockery of the aristocracy, the play's performance was forbidden in Vienna, but according to biographers Mozart and da Ponte snatched up a printed copy before they were banned as well. When the opera version had been commissioned, Emperor Joseph II approved the libretto, and Figaro enjoyed a modest success in its first performances. However, during the period of Metternich's reforms in the early 19th century, the opera's performance was banned as well.

Synopsis

The plot of The Marriage of Figaro takes place in Count Almaviva's palace in Seville, Spain after the events of Rossini's opera The Barber of Seville, although Mozart's opera was written 30 years earlier. There was, however, an earlier opera based on Beaumarchais' Barber written by the Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello, and its Viennese performance in 1782 would have surely contributed to Mozart and da Ponte's interest in writing a sequel once Beaumarchais had written his sequel two years later.

Act I

As the curtain rises, Figaro is measuring his new apartment while he and Susanna warmly anticipate their coming marriage. Susanna tells Figaro that his boss Count Almaviva has made advances at her, and wishes to reinstate the "feudal right" of noblemen to bed maidens before their wedding night. Figaro vows to beat Almaviva at his own game and departs.

Bartolo, a doctor whom Figaro had outwitted in Barber, enters with Marcelline, who has hired him to stop the wedding from taking place, wishing to marry Figaro herself. Bartolo is happy to oblige as vengeance for past wrongs. Susanna and Marcellina exchange insults, and Marcellina exits with Bartolo in a huff. Cherubino, a young page who can't control his attraction to all women, especially the Countess Rosina, asks for Susanna's help in assuaging the Count's anger. Just then, the Count enters and Cherubino hides behind a chair. Almaviva tries to convince an unwilling Susanna to sleep with him, but his attempts are humorously derailed by the entrance of Basilio, the morally degenerate music teacher. The Count also hides behind the chair, which Cherubino is forced to abandon at the last moment for the top of the chair, hiding under a dress.

Basilio begins gossiping about Cherubino's obvious attraction to the Countess, at which the Count angrily comes out of hiding. He discovers Cherubino hiding by lifting up the dress, and just as that moment Cherubino is saved by the entrance of Figaro and the peasants. Figaro praises the Count excessively for his enlightement in rescinding the feudal right, and in front of his subjects Almaviva is forced to uphold the rescinsion, but refuses to make a formal gesture promising to leave Susanna alone. He then gives Cherubino a military dispatch as a means of punishment, and Figaro closes the act by teasing Cherubino.

Act II

The act begins with the Countess alone in her chamber, lamenting her husband's unfaitfulness. Susanna (who is the Countess's maid) enters to console her. Figaro joins them, telling of his plan to keep the Count occupied with phony anonymous letters warning him of plots by other men to seduce the Countess; he has aleady given one such letter to Basilio.

Cherubino comes in, shirking military duty (at Figaro's suggestion) by asking Susanna and the Countess to dress him as a girl. After noticing that the Count's military dispatch was not officially signed, they are unable to finish dressing Cherubino, as Almaviva suddenly knocks on the door. Cherubino hides in the closet with Susanna and Rosina lets the Count in. He hears a noise coming from the closet, and demands the Countess open it, but she insists it's only Susanna trying on her wedding dress. Susanna sneaks into the room, and the Count suspiciously insists again that Rosina unlock the closet. When she refuses, he forces her to go with him to another room to fetch his key, taking the precaution of locking all of the doors first.

Meanwhile, Cherubino comes out of hiding, and jumps out the window to avoid being caught. Susanna goes back in the closet before the Count and Countess return. Very nervous about Cherubino's fate, Rosina begs for Almaviva's understanding. Growing more furious, he curses his wife's unfaithfulness and opens the door, only to find Susanna there as promised. Once the tables are turned, the Countess is able to feign offense at her husband's inability to trust her, and the two women taunt him further in his guilt as he asks for forgiveness. Returning to the subject of the anonymous letter, the women inform him that Figaro had written it.

Figaro enters and wishes to begin the wedding preparations, but the Count still wants to ask him about the note. Susanna successfully telegraphs to Figaro that the Count knows already. Just then, the gardener enters, drunk, complaining that someone destroyed the flower bushes just outside the window. Figaro pretends it had been he, but then the gardener produces the military dispatch that Cherubino had apparently dropped. Picking up the women's telegraphing again, and without missing a beat, Figaro explains that he kept the dispatch as Cherubino left for military service, as the Count had forgotten to sign it. This problem solved, Bartolo and Marcellina enter, claiming that Figaro has a pending contract to marry her. The Count happily postpones the wedding while the matter is looked into.

Act IV

External Links

• Side-by-side Italian/English libretto
• Full score from the Neue Mozart Ausgabe