The Marriage of Figaro

Writing a few years before the French Revolution, barely concealing himself in his hero, Beaumarchais pours his class rage into a stock-comic vessel that barely contains it under pressure. Three years after the happy ending of, it s the valet s turn to marry. But his master the Count has tired of his lovely Countess, and lusts for Figaro s bride-to-be, Suzanne. He determines to revive the ancient the lord of the manor s right to bed her. Figaro and the women concoct a counter-plot; the Count s page, Cherubin (Mozart s Cerubino) makes hash of it through his passionate crush on the Countess. The double/triple/quadruple misunderstanding yields one of the most perfect farce scenes of all time, featuring a chair and a closet, and one of the finest master-servant scenes, featuring a razor. The play, as great in its kind as the opera Mozart made from it, proclaims Figaro a better man than the Count and the women better humans than the men. This version restores two revolutionary passages that the author cut to save his liberty: a confrontation between the Count and his vassals in the final scene that anticipates the guillotine, and a searing indictment of sexual inequality by Figaro s mother, Marceline.