Le nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)

Introduction

“…I entrust myself to your taste in matters of music and your discretion in matters of propriety,” said Emperor Joseph II to Lorenzo Da Ponte – at least according to the librettist’s memoirs. The salon-appropriate libretto, adapted from Beaumarchais’s scandalous comedy (which had been politically blacklisted in the imperial city), truly is a skilful and powerful reduction. Yet Mozart’s music was able to elevate this largely simplified comedy of intrigue to almost implausible heights. Rococo setting or not, the music transformed the characters into flesh-and-blood individuals and liberated them from the inherited clichés of traditional Italian opera buffa. The range of expression spans from dramatically heightened emotions to melancholy and witty humour, and thus, through Mozart’s lens, Beaumarchais’s rococo world also became more fully rounded. Ferenc Kazinczy also saw the opera and commemorated Nancy Storace’s astonishing performance (she sang the role of Rosina) in his Memoirs of My Career.

The opera is a coherent masterpiece from overture to finale, making it difficult to simply list its “greatest hits.” Among the standout arias are Figaro’s two from the first act (“Se vuol ballare,” “Non più andrai”), Bartolo’s famous aria“La vendetta”, Cherubino’s brilliantly light canzonetta (“Non so più cosa son”) and his tender song (“Voi che sapete”), the Countess’s beautifully supple entrance aria from Act II (“Porgi amor”), and the so-called Rose Aria from Act IV. Also outstanding are the duet between Susanna and the Count, and the Letter Duet between Susanna and the Countess from Act III. The first-act chorus (“Giovani liete”) likewise becomes etched in the listener’s memory. Mozart’s music possesses a sensual depth: even within its often humorous charm, the undercurrent of accumulating drama is palpable. The composer’s hypersensitivity acts as an infallible seismograph, capturing the soul’s tremors – whether naive, tragic, melancholic, sentimental, or malicious. He refuses to reduce his characters to types or to fit them neatly into boxes. The opera offers a convincingly rich panorama of human existence – something far beyond the usual expectations for a comic opera.

Zoltán Csehy

The first great Mozart – Da Ponte collaboration

There are a few operas that win a decisive battle right from their overture. Alongside a handful of Rossini buffas, Le nozze di Figaro is perhaps the most obvious example: the overture’s elemental drive, its irresistible charm, and improbable lightness over four to four and a half minutes virtually guarantee the entertainment of the hours to follow. And yet, it doesn’t even weave in themes from the opera itself – still, the overture wholly embodies the first great Mozart – Da Ponte collaboration. For us, of course, what’s most important in this masterpiece isn’t the component that had to be significantly trimmed when adapting the prose original for the opera stage – namely, the social-political charge and the critique of feudal privilege. Yet it’s worth knowing that contemporaries perceived more of this than we might assume; otherwise, the Wiener Realzeitung’s 1786 report on Figaro would not have opened with the line: “What cannot be said today is sung instead.”

But then, there’s so much else – more vital – that this comic opera offers, as if it comprehended the tangled (yet, as it turns out, not incomprehensible) world of human desires, urges, and emotions in its entirety. Take the most obvious example: the adolescent embodiment of eros that places every girl and woman on a pedestal of longing—Cherubino and his first aria (“Non so più cosa son”). Or the deeply human and profoundly feminine emotional ebb and flow that transforms the Countess’s melancholy so swiftly into cheerful flirtation and calculating wisdom. Or the brilliance that reveals entire new angles and perspectives, allowing us to see in the Count both a grandiose figure and a clumsy schemer, a potent (and overbearing) seducer and a laughably jealous husband, a gallant suitor, and, of course, a man who, in the eyes of his own servant, is little more than a ridiculous blowhard. Or we might simply point to that lightly magical, festive transcendence in Act IV (the Rose Aria and more), which not only detaches itself from the otherwise high-calibre comedic world of Beaumarchais’s play, but also from the familiar universe of everyday failings and entanglements.

Ferenc László

The director’s concept

I remember very well a scene from Miloš Forman’s film Amadeus. The congenial Tom Hulce, in the role of Mozart, is sitting at the billiards table with sheets of music, a pen, ink and a billiard ball. Mozart tosses the ball and composes until the ball returns. He tosses it, and then composes! The accompanying music is the last scene of Mozart’s Le nozze di Figaro. Count: “Contessa, perdono, perdono...” with a symphony orchestra. Excellent symbols: the ball is round, representing perfection. Its route is a triangle – the divine sign. The sides of the triangle meet in Mozart’s hands. Mozart as a composer understood perfectly the fullness and imperfectness of human life. He depicts his characters with humour, forgiveness and affectionate love. He sees the imperfect in the perfect and is brave enough to demonstrate it. He does not judge with “divine” absolution, and neither does he moralise: he understands. He simply regards humans as humans, discounting rank and gender. (A revolutionary act as he was aware of the political scandals around Beaumarchais.) For Mozart, the protagonist of Figaro is the human being in love, and there are quite a few of such persons here. He knows that humans are fallible, and does not even try to deny it.

Under Mozart’s touch, Le nozze di Figaro goes beyond the borders of its artistic form – dramma giocoso in quattro atti – as characters are depicted with unprecedented sensitivity and psychological accuracy in the arias and duets and the construction of the finale follows Mozartian concepts. Figaro is an opera of ensembles; the proportion of pieces (half of them) performed by ensembles is very high compared to solo pieces, and thus they greatly determine the weight, or, more precisely, the absurdity of musical representation and the culminant situations. I use the adjective “absurd” consciously as a 20th century term, because, in my view, Le nozze di Figaro is closely related to 20^th-century absurd drama (for instance, Key Searchers and Cat’s Play by István Örkény) as regards the technique of its construction. In my understanding, absurdity never develops from the characters’ “peculiar” behaviour. Just the opposite: absurdity is rooted in the behaviour of people who either stick stubbornly to an imagined reality or express themselves realistically in this imagined reality.

The “modernity” of Figaro in this sense causes that there is a turning point in each of the four acts where the real situation leads to a situation which looks incomprehensible, surrealistic and nightmarish from the characters’ perspective, and which we viewers find absurd. During the process of staging, I tried to identify and reveal these turning points. To me, Figaro is like a wheel set free, which jolts again and again, but then rolls on. Of course, this motion is never caused by the character who believes themselves to be the force that turns the wheel. It would only be proper to ask who the main character is. I think it can be disclosed that it is never the one who assigns the main role to oneself. Thus, this is “just” like life, summarized in the story of a “crazy day”. And thanks to Mozart’s abilities to describe characters with music perfectly, it is “only” a demonstration of human blindness, weakness, sycophancy, vanity, credulity, jealousy, and, first and foremost: a sensual depiction of love and desire.

Judit Galgóczy