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The Opera Novice: Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro is so engrossing you almost forget you're watching an opera, says Sameer Rahim.
“Here they talk about nothing but Figaro. Nothing is played sung or whistled but Figaro. Certainly a great honour for me.” Mozart was rightly pleased with his work. Apparently he looked through 100 plays before choosing to adapt Beaumarchais’ political comedy about a disreputable count and his insubordinate servant. His favoured librettist Lorenzo da Ponte toned down the drama’s radicalism and played up the sexual farce. Once he started Mozart didn’t muck around. “As fast as I wrote the words, Mozart set them to music,” wrote Da Ponte. Within six weeks the composer had given the world The Marriage of Figaro.
The premiere in Vienna in May 1786 didn’t go down well (strangely the Emperor Joseph thought the music too heavy); once it opened in Prague, though, it was a hit and has been pretty much ever since.
In preparation I listened to the opera a couple of times before seeing it; but though it sounded lovely – Brahms described each musical sequence as a “miracle” – I found my concentration drifting if I didn’t follow the libretto. When I saw Michael Grandage’s Glyndebourne touring production in South London, I realised what the problem was.
So closely matched are the music and the drama that you have to watch The Marriage of Figaro for it to make sense. The opening scene, when Figaro is measuring the room for his marriage bed and his fianceé Susanna is trying on a bonnet, is enhanced by its domestic naturalism. (It certainly made a refreshing change from Wagner.) The usual panoply of cross-dressing and sexual misunderstandings ensue – but the plot’s so well constructed that you feel nothing worse than pleasantly confused.
Grandage's production is set in a Moorish palace in Seville sometime in the 1960s or 1970s. Quite what the Moors have to do with anything I’m not sure, but the set is undeniably stunning. Late-hippie was the milieu with characters breaking out into groovy shuffles during their arias. (I thought I spotted one throwing in some Gangnam Style but my companion assured me I was imagining things.) Dr Bartolo, scheming for revenge on Figaro for stealing his ward Rosina for the count, made us cringe with his old man-moves. His bombastic words – “To leave an insult unavenged is base and despicable” – are set to hints of the Don Giovanni overture but the music is never truly threatening: Bartolo will always be a failed seducer.
Mozart, himself a servant, knew well the hypocritical courtesies found in aristocratic households. In a delightfully witty scene, Marcellina, the old woman bonded to marry Figaro, and Susanna trade insults in veiled language. Surely this prefigures their later relationship when it turns out that Marcellina is Figaro’s mother, and Susanna becomes her daughter-in-law?
Despite having officially given up the right to sleep with his servants, the count wants Figaro’s Susanna for himself. He catches her with Cherubino (“little cupid”), a priapic boy who has been confessing his love for the countess. Cherubino is a budding count: he has the same desire as the head of the household, only lacking the means.
The count sends the young lover to war prompting Figaro’s famous “Non piu andrai,” aria. “No more now will you flutter by / To bother the ladies night and day, / You pressing, lovesick butterfly,” he sings to a cheerful marching beat. “How loud the cannonball, Blunderbuss and caterwaul, / All muddy, bitter and gory,” he continues. A hint of darkness, then, among the glitter – something typically Mozartian.
The countess's mournful aria at the start of act two leads us into emotionally richer territory. In the later “Dovo sono” she reflects on the cunning depths to which her husband has forced her – “Prima amata, indi offesa, e alfin tradita”, “first loved, then insulted, and at last betrayed.” The Marriage of Figaro is more than farce: the countess and Susanna’s fear of betrayal, and the risks they run to punish their foolish partners, make us all the more relieved when love and – crucially – forgiveness win the day.
Some operas show off with great musical moments but don’t hold up well as artistic wholes. But with there's nothing overbearing about The Marriage of Figaro – at times you even forget you’re watching an opera. And I mean that as a compliment.