 
The Marriage of Figaro: Mozart follows Beaumarchais |
When the Masks are Off
The Marriage of Figaro: Mozart follows Beaumarchais
Le barbier de Séville, the first part of the Figaro trilogy written by the French dramatist Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), was set to music by Giovanni Paisiello and became the most popular opera in Vienna in the eighteenth century. Mozart and his librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, hoped to take advantage of this popularity with their version of Le mariage de Figaro, the continuation of the Barbier, and after working on it for only six weeks in October and November, 1785, Mozart had completed most of the score. He worked “hand in hand” with Da Ponte, the composition of the music and the libretto even taking place at the same time.
Marital unhappiness
The extent to which they consciously and openly tried to profit from the success of Paisiello’s opera can be seen even in the very details of their joint work, Le Nozze di Figaro, K 492. At her first appearance, a solo scene, Paisiello’s Rosina, later the Countess, sings “larghetto” a cavatina in E flat. The orchestral accompaniment to this solo contains a striking intertwining of clarinets and bassoons. When the curtain rises at the beginning of the second act of the Nozze, Mozart’s countess is alone in her room lamenting over her broken marriage – and her E flat cavatina, “Porgi amor”, is also sung in “larghetto” time and is accompanied by the striking duet-like interplay of clarinets and bassoons. The Viennese audience recognized this reference, no doubt, but even so they did not receive it with anything like the enthusiasm that they showed for Paisiello’s triumphal work. For one thing, Mozart’s opera was unusually long – too long, for shortly afterwards it was produced in two separate parts in Italy – and, in addition, the ensemble had obviously great difficulty with the new roles at the first performance. “Aprite presto aprite”, the Susanna-Cherubino duet from the fourth scene of the second act proved to be the most popular part and it had to be repeated twice at the third performance, which meant that Cherubino had to jump out of the window three times.
Singing instead of talking
“This is awful, it will never go on stage” is what the French king, Louis XVI, is reported to have said after he was presented with Beaumarchais’ Le mariage de Figaro. When permission was finally given for the Comédie Française performance on April 27th, 1784, a lot of deception and intrigue had preceded it and this, naturally, had increased the sensation value of the work and turned the plot into a political coup, although the author, a downright social climber, was anything but a revolutionary. While a theatre performance of Figaro in the German language as planned by Emanuel Schikaneder’s troupe of actors for 1785 was prohibited in the Vienna of Josef II, the publishing of the libretto, on the other hand, was exempted from this prohibition in a time of enlightened rulership and relaxed censorship. The fact that Beaumarchais’ drama did in the end go on stage via the roundabout route of Da Ponte’s tamer version gave occasion to the reviewers in the “Wiener Realzeitung” newspaper to comment as follows: “What it is forbidden to say in our times, is sung.” This is a loose and not unbiassed translation of a passage in the Barbier de Séville whose original is: “Aujourd'hui, ce qui ne vaut pas la peine d’êre dit, on le chante.” (“Today one sings what is not worth talking about.”)
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| Christoph Marthaler, stage-director (left) and Sylvain Cambreling, conductor of The Marriage of Figaro. Photo: Bernd Uhlig |
The infidelity of women
But what dared not be said was also not sung: Figaro's famous monologue in the fifth act of the Mariage (this was what particularly enraged Louis XVI) is omitted by Da Ponte and replaced by an outbreak of fury over the supposed infidelity of women (aria “Aprite un po’ quegl’occhi”). Nevertheless, the suppressed passage in Beaumarchais’ text provides the key to Mozart and Da Ponte’s opera, for the open criticism made of the privileges claimed by the aristocracy supports the self-confidence of the servants Figaro and Susanna and forms the basis on which all the scheming and intriguing of the plot develops, both in the drama and in the opera: “No, Count, you will not get them”, Beaumarchais’ Figaro proclaims decidedly. “Aristocracy, richness, rank, prestige: all these things make one so proud! But what have you done to deserve so many privileges? You have given yourself the trouble of coming into the world, nothing else.” But the words which Figaro uses in the same monologue in the fifth act, when he endeavours to make a final comment on the innumerable strokes of fate and the many ups and downs that have characterized his life, are far more significant, more radical, more revolutionary than such passing comments on the politics of the day: “How come such things happened to me? Who made these things fall about my ears? As I must continue along the path I entered without knowing and must leave without wanting to, I strewed it with as many flowers as my gaiety would allow. And when I say my gaiety, I do not even know if it belongs to me, any more than all the other things; and I do not even know who this I is with whom I am concerned.”
As fate will have it
The question of the I, of identity, is a typical philosophic problem posed by the eighteenth century with its growing scepticism towards the theoretical construct of the “individual”. No medium was more suited for presenting this theme than that of comedy with its traditional elements of masque and its practice of ad lib stylization. Likewise, the characteristic features of the “zanni”, the burlesque servant characters of the Commedia dell’arte, come shining through in the characters of the Mariage de Figaro and Le Nozze di Figaro. But what remains after the masks are off? In the monologue sacrificed by Da Ponte, Figaro reflects on the role-playing involved in his way of living. He sees himself as a “pleasure-addicted young man who savours delights, who will engage in any occupation in order to survive, one time playing the lord, another time the servant, as fate will have it”. But if Figaro were to exchange the mask, were to change roles, were himself to become the master, would he be a better Count, a more faithful husband? With their third co-production Mozart and Da Ponte later gave the answer to this question: in Cosí fan tutte everybody behaves in the same way, whether they are called Fiordiligi or Dorabella, Ferrando or Guglielmo. All men are the same, is the moral of the story, but it is not good news. (In the history of the interpretation of Figaro, this insight is reflected in the fact that the same singers often alternate in playing the roles of Figaro and the Count!)
Far from over
Beaumarchais entitled his work La folle journée (Le mariage de Figaro was only the subtitle). A “crazy day” full of madness and clownery, a topsy-turvy world, is presented to our eyes – and to our ears, when Mozart, even in the very overture, conjures up that “mad ghost” that enters into the daily routine to turn everything upside down. E.T.A. Hoffmann saw this as the main characteristic of opera buffa: the master becomes the servant, the countess the lady-in-waiting, and everything is turned about. For one day only? Is the spectre gone when the confused and the deceived are reconciled with each other again through atonement and forgiveness? The poet Robert Walser once commented on “An Operatic Performance” of Mozart’s Figaro: “I left the theatre feeling that the work was far from over, that it had to continue forth, that it couldn’t even come to an end – never withering, ever blooming, like life itself.”
Wolfgang Stähr