The Marriage of Figaro

• 1. Censorship And Political Fire

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  Emperor Joseph II of Austria issued a direct order in 1784 that banned the German version of Beaumarchais's play The Marriage of Figaro. He stated that since the piece contained much that was objectionable, he expected the Censor to either reject it altogether or make such alterations that he would be responsible for the performance and its impression on the public. The Austrian Censor duly forbade performing the play after this imperial decree. The original text dealt with frank class conflict, which made the authorities nervous about its potential impact on society. Mozart's librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte later asserted in his memoirs that the ban existed only because of sexual references within the script. Da Ponte managed to get official approval from the emperor for an operatic version by removing all political references from the source material. He replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria directed at unfaithful wives instead. While the political content was suppressed, the opera enhanced the emotional content according to Stendhal. The composer transformed into real passions the superficial attachments that amused Beaumarchais's easy-going inhabitants of Count Almaviva's castle Aguas Frescas.

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• 2. Six Weeks Of Collaboration

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  Mozart selected Beaumarchais's play and brought it to Lorenzo Da Ponte in 1785. Da Ponte turned the French comedy into a libretto in six weeks. He rewrote the entire work in poetic Italian while stripping away the dangerous political undertones. The Imperial Italian opera company paid Mozart 450 florins for the completed work. This sum represented three times his meagre yearly salary when he had worked as a court musician in Salzburg. Da Ponte received 200 florins for his writing efforts. The Emperor approved the libretto before any music was written by Mozart. This collaboration marked the first of three partnerships between the two men. They would later create Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte together. The speed of their work allowed them to transform a banned play into a masterpiece without losing the core drama. Their partnership relied on mutual trust and shared artistic vision during this intense period of creation.

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• 3. Vienna Premiere And Prague Triumph

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  The Marriage of Figaro premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on the 1st of May 1786. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart conducted the first two performances while seated at the keyboard, following the custom of the day. Later performances were conducted by Joseph Weigl. The first production received eight further performances all within 1786. The applause of the audience on the first night resulted in five numbers being encored. Seven encores occurred on the 8th of May. Emperor Joseph II became concerned about the length of the performance and directed his aide to print posters stating that no piece for more than a single voice would be repeated. These posters appeared in time for the third performance on the 24th of May. The newspaper Wiener Realzeitung published a review on the 11th of July 1786 praising the work warmly despite some interference from paid hecklers. The Hungarian poet Ferenc Kazinczy attended a May performance and remembered Nancy Storace enchanting eye, ear, and soul. He noted that the joy caused by this music was far removed from all sensuality. Joseph Haydn appreciated the opera greatly and wrote to a friend that he heard it in his dreams. A special performance took place at the palace theatre in Laxenburg during June 1786.

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• 4. Ensembles And Dramatic Music

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  The finale of act 2 lasts approximately 20 minutes and stands as one of the longest uninterrupted pieces of music Mozart ever composed. Eight of the opera's eleven characters appear on stage during its more than 900 bars of continuous music. Charles Rosen notes the richness of ensemble writing which carries forward action in a far more dramatic way than recitatives alone could achieve. Many sections resemble sonata form with movement through sequences of keys building up and resolving musical tension. This provides a natural musical reflection of the drama unfolding before the audience. Mozart eschews recitativi altogether in closing numbers of all four acts. He opts for increasingly sophisticated writing bringing characters on stage to revel in complex weaves of solo and ensemble singing. These climaxes reach seven- and eight-voice tutti for acts 2 and 4. The composer uses the sound of two horns playing together to represent cuckoldry in an aria within act 4. Verdi later used this same device in Ford's aria in Falstaff. The synthesis of accelerating complexity and symmetrical resolution enabled him to find a musical equivalent for great stage works.

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• 5. Voice Types And Modern Revivals

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  In modern performance practice Cherubino and Marcellina are usually assigned to mezzo-sopranos while Figaro goes to a bass-baritone. Mozart and his contemporaries never used terms like mezzo-soprano or baritone though the Neue Mozart-Ausgabe score lists Almaviva as a specific type. Women's roles were listed as either soprano or contralto while men's roles appeared as tenor or bass. Many of Mozart's baritone and bass-baritone roles derive from the basso buffo tradition where no clear distinction existed between bass and baritone. This practice continued well into the 19th century. A distinct mezzo-soprano voice type emerged only during the 1800s. Modern re-classifications rely on analysis of contemporary descriptions of singers who created those roles and their other repertoire plus the role's tessitura in the score. The premiere cast included Stefano Mandini as Count Almaviva and Luisa Laschi as Countess Rosina. Nancy Storace played Susanna while Francesco Benucci portrayed Figaro. In 1789 a revival production replaced both arias of Susanna with new compositions better suited to Adriana Ferrarese del Bene. These replacement arias remain normally unused in modern performances except for notable exceptions like Cecilia Bartoli at the Metropolitan Opera in 1998.

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• 6. Legacy And Enduring Influence

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  The Marriage of Figaro appears consistently among the top ten operas performed globally according to Operabase data. In 2017 BBC News Magazine asked 172 opera singers to vote for the best operas ever written. The work came in first out of twenty featured options. Critics described it as one of supreme masterpieces of operatic comedy whose rich sense of humanity shines out of Mozart's miraculous score. Johannes Brahms stated that each number in Figaro is a miracle totally beyond his understanding. He believed nothing like it was ever done again not even by Beethoven. Beethoven wrote WoO 40 for violin and piano based on Figaro's cavatina. Ferdinand Ries used music from the opera in his Opus 77. Moscheles incorporated the duettino Crudel! perchè finora into his Opus 72/4. Franz Liszt quoted the opera in his Fantasy on Themes from Mozart's Figaro and Don Giovanni S. 697. Henry R. Bishop adapted the opera into English in 1819 while reusing some of Mozart's music. John Corigliano included elements of Beaumarchais's third Figaro play in his 1991 opera The Ghosts of Versailles quoting Mozart's overture several times.

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