Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, the author of Le mariage de Figaro, was a fascinating character. Born in 1732 he (like his character Figaro) enjoyed many different professions during his life. He was a watchmaker, an instructor of harp, a judge, a diplomat and even, at one point in his life, a spy. He was also a man of contradiction, having at one time purchased a noble title but at another time furnished arms to rebels involved in both the American and French revolutions. Above all, however, he was a writer for the stage, his first theatrical efforts being produced when he was 25 years old.
The Barber of Seville was the first in a cycle of three plays, all featuring the same characters whom we watch grow older and deal with different situations in their lives. These characters are Count Almaviva, the lovely Rosina who is the object of his affections, and his servant Figaro. In the first play Almaviva outwits the old doctor Bartolo in order to marry the doctor’s ward, Rosina, all the while helped by the machinations of his barber Figaro. In the second play, The Marriage of Figaro, they’re a few years older. It is now the servant Figaro who outwits his aristocratic master. Figaro has to protect his new young bride Susanna from the Count who desires her and who wishes to continue the ancient tradition of the droit du seigneur, the right of a reigning nobleman to have access to his subjects’ brides on the first night of their marriage. At the same time Figaro tries to preserve the Count’s marriage to Rosina, who is now, of course, the Countess Almaviva. The third play, rarely revived these days, is called The Guilty Mother. It takes place twenty years after the previous play, and involves the illegitimate children of the Count and Countess, the potential loss of their fortune and, again, the last minute redemption of his employers by Figaro’s wit and wisdom.
While Barber is pure comedy with roots in the works of Moliére, Le mariage de Figaro was heavily barbed and dangerously flirted with breaking down the barrier between the serving class and the nobility. The Guilty Mother, however, has a darkness and cynicism that reflects the Revolutionary period during which it was produced and first staged in 1792.
It’s interesting to note that Beaumarchais wrote both Barber and Figaro with music in mind. The original Marriage of Figaro was one of the lengthiest plays written up to that point simply because there were so many musical numbers demanded by the author. And Barber was conceived as an opéra comique from its inception and was only rewritten as a straight stage play after it was rejected for production by the Theatre Italienne. And so it was eventually staged by the Comédie Française and has been a part of their repertoire ever since. Beaumarchais led a fascinating life filled with political intrigue and even imprisonment on more than one occasion, but to opera lovers he will be best known as having providing the source material for two of the greatest operas ever written.
According to Lorenzo Da Ponte’s memoirs it was Mozart who chose to set the Beaumarchais play as an opera, giving Da Ponte the chore of making the necessary alterations to create a singable libretto and a work that would pass muster with the state censors. In any event he created a brilliant libretto that is true to the original text and created ample opportunity for Mozart to comment musically on the social and character detail found within it. It seems that the two worked closely on the work. Again, quoting Da Ponte: “I…suggested that we write the text and music without letting anyone know about it, then wait for an opportune moment to offer it to the management or the emperor himself, and I courageously volunteered to carry out this project…Thus we set to work side by side; each part of the text was set to music by Mozart as soon as I had written it, and in six weeks the work was finished.” Considering that Da Ponte was a relative beginner at writing libretti, the poem for Le nozze di Figaro stands out as a monumental achievement in the history of opera.