(The Marriage of Figaro)

Opera buffa in four acts

Libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte
after the Beaumarchais comedy Le folle Journée ou le Mariage de Figaro

First performance: Burgtheater, Vienna, May 1, 1786

 Cast in order of appearance:
Figaro, the count's valet (baritone)
Susanna, the countess's chambermaid (soprano)
Bartolo, a doctor (bass)
Marcellina, housekeeper (mezzo-soprano)
Cherubino, the count's page (soprano)
Count Almaviva (baritone)
Don Basilio, a music teacher (tenor)
Countess Almaviva (soprano)
Antonio, gardener and Susanna's uncle (bass)
Don Curzio, a judge (tenor)
Barbarina, Antonio's daughter (soprano)
Chorus of peasant men and women

Orchestra: 
2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons,  
2 horns, 2 trumpets, timpani, and strings 

Program Notes by Martin Pearlman

Wolfgang "is up to his ears in work," Leopold wrote in November of 1785, as his son was hurrying to finish The Marriage of Figaro.  Producing an opera based on Beaumarchais' play Le mariage de Figaro was a risky venture for Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte.  The play had been publicly performed for the first time in Paris only recently, following years of being banned and heard only in private readings.  It was the talk of Paris, a popular scandal, and when it finally did come to the stage, it attracted enormous crowds and unprecedented box office receipts.  Louis XVI considered it dangerous; Napoleon later called it "the revolution in action."  It is filled with social criticism, ridicules the nobility, and expresses new attitudes about women.  A public airing in such a witty, colloquial and engaging form was subversive.

In Vienna, where local censors had banned Beaumarchais' play after only a short run, Mozart and Da Ponte decided to set it as an opera.  According to Da Ponte's memoirs, they composed the work in secret, and Da Ponte took it upon himself to convince the emperor to allow them to produce it.  He reports that he told the emperor, "I have run together and omitted all that could offend the refinement and decorum of a spectacle at which Your Sovereign Majesty will be present."

The emperor, along with various members of the nobility attended a dress rehearsal and allowed the production to go forward.  Aside from intrigues by artistic competitors, the opera was never in danger of being closed down.  Da Ponte's libretto, as it turned out, was not truly revolutionary in spirit. It was more of a social comedy with a good deal of the play's political content removed or toned down. 

In Beaumarchais, the dangerous social satire is clear.  Figaro exclaims, "Because you are a great nobleman you think you are a great genius . . . What have you done to deserve such advantages?  Put yourself to the trouble of being born -- nothing more!  For the rest -- a very ordinary man!  Whereas I, lost among the obscure crowd, have had to deploy more knowledge, more calculation and skill merely to survive than has sufficed to rule all the provinces of Spain for a century!  Yet you would measure yourself against me."  Marceline complains about the status of women:  "In a state of servitude behind the alluring pretenses of respect, treated as children where our possessions are concerned, we are punished as responsible adults where our faults are in question!"  In Da Ponte's libretto and in Mozart's music, the drama, at least on the surface, focuses more on human emotions and forgiveness than it does on class conflict and revolutionary notions.  Ideas from the play are not completely absent, but the opera was able to pass the censors. 

In reducing the text of the play to make it suitable for music, the libretto also inevitably sacrifices some of the fullness of the original characters:  in Beaumarchais, the countess shows an ambivalent but growing interest in Cherubino, and indeed in the third play of the trilogy, The Guilty Mother, she has had an illegitimate child by him.  This side of the countess is not in the opera libretto.  Nonetheless, Mozart's music makes the rejected spouse a fully three-dimensional character.

In his memoirs, Da Ponte tells us that it was Mozart's idea to set Figaro as an opera.  Why Mozart was attracted to such a controversial and "dangerous" play is impossible to know, especially since his letters never mention political ideas or even events such as the French revolution.  Perhaps he was drawn to the story by the attention and publicity such a production would attract.  He may also have been inspired by the fact that it was the sequel to Beaumarchais' The Barber of Seville, which had recently become an enormously popular opera by Paisiello.

The premiere of Le nozze di Figaro on May 1, 1786 was eagerly awaited, the public anticipation no doubt increased in part because the original play was banned.  The reaction at first was mixed.  Anyone who came expecting the bite of Beaumarchais' play would have been disappointed, but in addition, Mozart's music was surprisingly complex.  One reviewer wrote, "The audience, it must be said (and this is often true of audiences), did not rightly know what to make of the work at first . . . the music is very difficult.  But now that repeated performances have taken place, the listener who refused to concede that Herr Mozart's music was a masterpiece of art would clearly have to admit his allegiance to the cabal or else that he had no taste."

The opera ran for only nine performances -- the first three led by Mozart himself -- at the Burgtheater in Vienna before it was closed.  It was not a wonderful run compared to the popularity of operas by Salieri, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, but a second production in Vienna a few years later met with greater success.  In Prague the story was even better.  Mozart wrote to his father, "Here they talk about nothing but Figaro; nothing is played, sung or whistled but Figaro; no opera draws the crowds but Figaro, always Figaro; it is certainly a great honor for me."  The Figaro mania in Prague ultimately led to a commission for another opera, Don Giovanni, for the following season. 

Many of the singers in the original Figaro, as in other operas of the time, were extremely young by modern standards. Nancy Storace, who sang the difficult role of Susanna, was only 21, Cherubino was 23, Basilio 24, and even the countess was still in her 20's. Amazingly, Anna Gottlieb, who sang Barbarina, was only 12. (She later was the first Pamina in The Magic Flute at 17.). The basses, however, were older, Figaro being a positively geriatric 40, and the other basses were close to the same age. The taste for the light voices of young singers, at least among the higher voice types, may perhaps account for some of the initial criticism that Mozart's orchestrations were too full. It is an issue that is not such a problem today, even with modern instruments.

Orchestration Chart

This chart gives an overview of the work, showing which soloists and instruments are in each movement. It has also been useful in planning rehearsals, since one can see at a glance all the music that a particular musician plays. Red X's indicate major solo moments for a singer. An X in parentheses indicates that the use of that instrument is ad libitum.

This is a preview of the beginning of the chart. You can download or view a PDF of the whole chart here.

Boston Baroque Performances

Le nozze di Figaro

June 1 & 3, 1991
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA (Boston Early Music Festival)
Martin Pearlman, conductor
Laurence Senelick, stage director

Soloists:
Matthew Lau - Figaro
Patrice Michaels Bedi - Susanna
Robert Ferrier - Bartolo
D’Anna Fortunato - Marcellina
Lorraine Hunt - Cherubino
Richard Cohn - Count Almaviva
Frank Kelley - Don Basilio
Carol Ann Allred - Countess Almaviva
Paul Houghtaling - Antonio
William Hite - Don Curzio
Jean Danton - Barbarina

Excerpts from Le nozze di Figaro

December 31, 2014 & January 1, 2015
Sanders Theater, Cambridge, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Soloists:
Sara Heaton, soprano
Andrew Garland, baritone

Arias from Le nozze di Figaro

May 4 & 5, 2007
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

Soloist:
Michael Maniaci, soprano

Overture to Le nozze di Figaro

October 11, 1991
NEC’s Jordan Hall, Boston, MA
Martin Pearlman, conductor

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