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| FIGARO |
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| FIGARO |
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| top Barbarina, the gardener's daughter, and Cherubino, the youngster with raging hormones, diiscover they're two of a kind. [soprano Catherine Ireland and mezo-soprano Margaret Lattimore, in the trouser role of Cherubino] |
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| second row Beaumarchais, author of the stage play, was born Pierre-Augustin Caron. As a youngster he was called "fils Caron" which, when pronounced in contemporary French, is "fee-ca-ro." Clearly the playwright's alter ego, Figaro in the play is also a writer who rails against the injustices of society and class. In Act I of the opera, Figaro's aria "Se vuol ballare" is an angry, mocking reaction to the awareness that the Count - who is plotting to seduce Figaro's wife - is in the power position while Figaro is helpless... or seemingly helpless. He twists it into a pronouncement that if after all, the Count wishes to dance, it is he, Figaro, who will call the tune. [baritone Andrew Wentzel] |
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block - top left Figaro's goal is to confound the Count - which he does by thinking fast and responding to signals from Susanna and the Countess - when questioned about a letter and a balcony escape. [baritones Rodney Gilfry and Andrew Wentzel] |
block - top right Susanna also thinks fast, and hides the lovesick Cherubino under a dustcloth, then sassily perches on the arm of the chair herself. All to no avail, but it takes a number of close calls before the discovery is made. [soprano Ute Selbig] |
| THE ORIGINAL PLAY | |||
 Susanna makes the Count think she's willing to meet him later when she's really leading him into a trap.
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Five years
before the French Revolution liberated the prisoners from the Bastille, a revolution in
words was taking place inside a theatre. The Marriage of Figaro was written by musician / inventor / businessman / politician / diplomat / arms merchant / publisher / free-thinker and man of letters Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. A true man of his age, intoxicated by the concept of freedom and willing to speak out, he was thrown in jail for abusive behavior while trying to defend his play. Napoleon once said, "If I had been a king, a man such as he [Beaumarchais] would have been locked up… 'The Marriage of Figaro' is already the revolution in action." Though on the surface a love story, the hype revolved around the more flammable material. The play criticized royal privilege, mocked the justice system, and paraded a sexual double standard that demanded virginity of women while condoning promiscuity among men. Of course it was wildly successful, even though most of the audience were members of the aristocracy, watching their own demise. On opening night, a man was crushed to death by the crowds at the front of the theatre, where he remained propped upright until intermission - it was too jammed to remove him any sooner. |
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| The clever
servant who outwits his master is a classic character onstage, from the Greek comedies to
the commedia dell'arte and La Serva
Padronna, an early opera. Theatre had first emerged in ancient Athens specifically
for the purpose of putting on stage complex and controversial feelings and ideas - those
too dangerous to experience or even to speak about in real life. In The Marriage of Figaro, Beaumarchais has his alter-ego Figaro describe politicians as having "what it takes to screw friends, disown promises, buy time, sell votes [and] the guts to glad-hand a man you're gonna stab in the back." And in Act IV - in a speech that Mozart and Da Ponte replaced with the aria Aprite un po'quegli occhi - the clever servant curses the Count, his master: "Because you're a great lord, you think you've got a great mind. Blood; money; rank; the choice appointments… what did you do to earn those many blessings? Took the trouble to be born: beyond that, you ain't much." Hardly surprising, then, that Louis XVI initially banned the play, saying Beaumarchais would have to demolish the Bastille before Figaro could be performed without embarrassing the government. Five years later, that's exactly what happened. |
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| lower row in block
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| fourth row Act II: Figaro, the Countess, and Susanna stare in breathless anticipation.... ... as the Count and his group - Don Basilio, Marcellina, and Bartolo
- gleefully examine the contract which promises that Figaro will marry Marcellina if he
cannot repay the money she lent him.
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| bottom Susanna [soprano Ute Selbig] emerges from her hiding place in the Coutness' bedchamber to begin the Act II finale, which flows seamlessly from one person to two, then four, five, and seven. She begins by calling out to Cherubino, who's hidden in the Countess' dressing room ("Aprite, presto"). They have a brief exchange which ends with Cherubino jumping out the window into the garden, while Susanna takes his place in the dressing room... and waits for the Count and Countess to return, with plans to force open the locked door. Susanna astonishes them both when it is she, not Cherubino, who emerges. The Count is in the middle of apologizing when Figaro enters and the Count becomes suspicious again... and even more suspicious when Antonio the gardner comes in to complain that someone jumped out of this window and broke his flower pots. The confusion grows as Marcellina, Bartolo and Basilio arrive demanding that the Count enforce the terms of a contract forcing Figaro to marry Marcellina. Throughout, the music is perfectly matched to the characters and situations, without ever becoming a farce - though by the time they are at the end of the act ("I'm stunned and bewildered / Stupefied and desperate!") the text is a precursor of Rossini's madcap finales. |
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| TROUSER ROLES IN OPERA | |||
| A holdover tradition from centuries ago, the origins of the convention of trouser roles in opera are complex. From the Greek plays through Shakespeare's time, women were not allowed to appear on stage - acting wasn't considered reputable for ladies - so the female roles had to be played by boys. The boy trainees often began between the ages of ten and thirteen, some of them continuing to play women's parts until they were in their late teens or early twenties, some eventually moving on to play the men's parts. Women didn't appear on the stage in England until the 17th century; just about that time, shortly before 1600, the first performance of what we will come to call opera takes place in Italy. | 
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The addition of the music as an equal partner in the drama is what complicates things. The contrast between high and low voices, the use of a particular voice type to indicate love or valor or madness, the things that differentiate opera from a play - all led to female singers being onstage in opera from the first. Society and musical tastes changed, and by the time of Mozart, the castrato voice was out of favor, but female
singers continued to play the roles of young boys. Cherubino in The Marriage of Figaro
'is one of the best known. The libretto describes him as "no longer a boy
really, but certainly not a man yet." Mozart gives the singer the very sound
of that boy's uncertain voice in his Act II song, Che voi sapete. The ups and
downs, the contrast in the notes, are exactly the sound of a boy's changing voice.
Cherubino, like the slightly older Octavian in Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier, is
disguised as a girl at some point in the story, further adding to the gender confusion. |
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| The challenges
for the singer are in the acting of the character - the singing is supposed to sound like
a woman's voice. But acting like a man, a boy - well, there's not a lot of training for
that. Most singers over act, striding "manfully" around the stage,
which always looks pretty bad; some are rather neutral, which comes across as anemic. A
few are adept at capturing the energy and the clumsiness in Cherubino, but lose track of
his emerging sensual nature. Frederica von Stade was wonderful in getting all of it right,
as is Pamela Helen Stephens in a filmed
production from the Théatre du Chatelet "You have to not walk like a girl with little steps" says mezzo-soprano Margaret Lattimore, the Cherubino here. "It's all in the walk - you lead with your... hips. Lead with what's important!" |
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| TOP OF PAGE | |||
| San Diego Opera presents | ||
| THE
MARRIAGE OF FIGARO by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart |
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| May 1998 | ||
| Conductor | Edoardo Müller | |
| Director | Lesley Koenig | |
| Set & Costume Design | Zack Brown | |
| xx | ||
| Figaro | Andrew Wentzel | |
| Susanna | Ute Selbig | |
| Bartolo | François Loup | |
| Marcellina | Judith Christin | |
| Cherubino | Margaret Lattimore | |
| Count Almaviva | Rodney Gilfry | |
| Don Basilio / Don Curzio | Francis Egerton | |
| Countess Almaviva | Emily Magee | |
| Antonio | James Scott Sikon | |
| Barbarina | Catherine Ireland | |
| EXPLORE MORE | ||
EXPLORE |
Lorenzo DaPonte: Mozart's Librettist - article by Agnes Selby | |
| Opera Basics - An Introduction The Opera Project - What's It All About? Explore More: Top 10 Ways to Fall in Love With Opera Singers &
Singing WORDS
& MUSIC SHOP |
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 Explore more about opera and art in ML Hart's award-winning The Art of Making Opera "The photos are as alive as reality and the text so clear and insightful." |
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