The first thing that can be noted about Figaro is its directness and brevity (not to be confused with its overall length). The arias and ensembles are all relatively short, getting to the dramatic point quickly so that we can move on to the next plot point. In short, Mozart treats Beaumarchais’ play exactly as it is meant to be: as a comedy. Mozart and his librettist Da Ponte must have respected the Beaumarchais original greatly. Acts I and II are virtually the same as they exist in the play, point for point. Things get a little more complicated in the final acts but that is because much of what Da Ponte had to excise in order to pass the censors is contained in those acts. What’s fascinating, however, is how Mozart uses his music to insinuate and hint at what Da Ponte had to leave on the table. How else does one explain the ascending scale passages in Susanna’s “Deh vieni, non tardar” other than to say that they unmistakably underline the sexual suggestiveness that the character intends? Or the presence of those wonderful passages for a pair of horns at the end of Figaro’s “Aprite un po’ quegl’occhi”, a bold reference to his supposed cuckolding by Susanna (‘corni’ or ‘horns’ referring to a husband having been ‘horned’ by his cheating wife)?
The glories of this score all lay in the brilliance of Mozart’s musical characterizations. Take the character of Cherubino, the adolescent page to Count Almaviva who spends much of the opera dealing with his raging hormones (the fact that the character is sung by a mezzo-soprano in trousers rather than by an actual adolescent boy who could never do justice to the role is as much about the underlying titillation in his scenes with the Countess, whom he adores, as about vocal appropriateness). Note how in his first act aria “Non so più” the vocal line and the orchestral accompaniment work together to give us a kind of breathless, excited quality as he tries to describe these new sensations coursing through his body. In his second act aria, “Voi che sapete”, these same feelings bubble up again and Mozart cleverly takes him through numerous distant key areas in order to project his nervousness in the presence of his ideal love.
Other characters are dealt with similarly. In “Se vuol ballare”, considering that the text expresses the servant’s intention to make the Count ‘dance to his tune’, Mozart casts the aria in the form of a minuet, adding shorter note-values, sixteenth notes, in the accompaniment to express Figaro’s underlying hurt and anger. After the Count sends Cherubino off to the army, Figaro sings “Non più andrai”. Listen to the running commentary in the orchestra: as he refers to the feathered hats that Cherubino will no longer wear we hear a ‘feathered’ flourish from the violins in the previous measure. The joke continues as he says “You’ll no longer have those feathers, that hat, that head of hair, that sparkling aspect”: cascading and descending scales describe both Cherubino’s finery as well as the direction of his mood as he glumly looks forward to ‘boot camp!’
Through these rather simple musical means the composer humanizes his characters and helps us to identify with them. Nothing can compare to the moment when, at the end of the opera, Count Almaviva begs forgiveness of his Countess for all of his digressions during ‘day of folly’ (La Folle Journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro is Beaumarchais’ official title for the original play). The allegro assai of the previous number comes to a halt, Mozart indicates a silent pause in the music, and then the Count begs his wife for pardon in an exquisitely simple vocal phrase, accompanied in the orchestra by the outlining of the most basic cadence in Western music: tonic to dominant. “Contessa, perdono! Perdono, perdono!” The Countess’ response is equally simple but in the context of the drama, ultimately stunning.
Simplicity, economy and beauty: no other opera rivals The Marriage of Figaro in these qualities. It is a supreme achievement in lyric theatre.