Le nozze di Figaro

Music by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte

Directed by David Walsh

November 9-12, 2006
Ted Mann Concert Hall

Photos

Synopsis

The Marriage of Figaro, like many of Mozart’s operas, can only be fully comprehended from the perspective of its own time period, the late 18th century. The feudal aristocracy had stagnated and atrophied—what had once been a system that represented a certain order and benevolence as it had evolved, now came under attack from within and without. As the nobility saw itself in danger of being overthrown, it responded in a “reactionary” way by attempting to preserve or restore customs and privileges that it had relinquished.

The Marriage of Figaro is about just such a “reaction” and the response it provokes. Yet, it is a mistake to perceive in the Mozart/Da Ponte opera (or, indeed, in Beaumarchais’ play on which it was based) a political or revolutionary manifesto. Quite the opposite, what is “radical” about Figaro is that it does not propose or promote political revolution but rather suggests a “change from within”—if you like, a kind of “liberation” that has more to do with changes in human hearts and the overthrow of outmoded or offensive ways of thinking and behaving.

The Marriage of Figaro is an opera in which the women, aided capriciously by the spirit of Eros as manifested in Cherubino, move gradually from the background and the shadows to take charge of the action and to teach their men the true meaning of love and forgiveness.

—David Walsh

"There is in all women a peculiar circle of inward interests, which remain always the same, and from which nothing in the world can divorce them. In outward social intercourse, on the other hand, they will gladly and easily allow themselves to take their tone from the person with whom at the moment they are occupied; and thus by a mixture of impassiveness and susceptibility, by persisting and by yielding, they continue to keep the government to themselves, and no man in the world can ever take it from them."
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Elective Affinities