The Marriage of Figaro: The Enlightenment and Emerging Realism in 18th Century Opera

The Marriage of Figaro: Enlightenment Critique and Emergence of
Realism in the late 18th century theatre and opera

By Peter Konefal

The infamous play The Marriage of Figaro, written by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ was a work of unprecedented theatrical innovation and audacity. By analyzing some of the early developments of opera and theatre in order to find the early beginnings of Enlightenment thought and realism in the theatre and opera, we can gain a perspective on the background of traditional aristocratic opera and theatre which Beaumarchais and his contemporaries worked against in order to develop new theatrical forms and ideas. Under the influence of the popular middle-class novel, the increasingly legitimate minor stage and external influences such as the Italian opera buffa, the theatre of the last quarter of the 18th century underwent radical changes from the theatrical forms of the previous century. Beaumarchais’ The Marriage of Figaro represents a moment of Enlightenment criticism in a new and more realistic theatrical world which been developing with the efforts of the philosophes and other dramatists since the mid eighteenth century (and before as well). Beaumarchais play and its appeal to the French popular audience reflected a growing appetite for a liberal arts which depicted the common man as a hero and cast a suspect light on the traditional authority of the aristocracy and Church. After the play showed in France, it was chosen by Mozart in the court of Joseph II for translation into an Italian comic opera. Although some of the play’s blatant Enlightenment criticism was censored at the request of Joseph II, the opera version and its author continued to emphasize similar themes and reflect the plays interest in the dramatic devices of realism.
James H. Johnson presents evidence in Listening in Paris: A Culture History, that Parisian opera-going in the mid-eighteenth century was less a pursuit of cultural connoisseurs but an important social function for the aristocracy and privileged elite. The purpose of this function was for the aristocracy and elite to observe one another, converse, and a chance for one to refine “proper etiquette,” – a constant process that depended on one’s observation and perception of current taste. Taste was an arbitrary concept and depended more on the approval of the King and persons of high aristocratic status than on actual aesthetic merit . Like official balls, banquets and coronations, the Opera served the purpose of a royal exhibition, where the socially important mingled and were observed in their front row boxes amid a backdrop of singing and fanciful music.
Since the actual aesthetics of the Opera did not take centre stage, the opera in the mid-eighteenth century mainly took forms that were suitable for generally superficial enjoyment. The most popular genres were the opera-ballet and the closely related pastorale, both of which contained more dancing than singing, and were structured in a series of acts with each act containing its own independent dramatic action . The second genre, the tragedie lyrique, was performed with a quarter of the frequency of the former genres and featured themes of mythic heroism and chivalry rather actual dramatic tragedy involving an unhappy ending. The tragedie lyrique contained fewer dances than the opera ballet and occasionally touched on political themes through mythical allegory, but these references were generally patriotic in nature and reinforced the authority of the king and his armies. The opera ballet and tragedie lyrique certainly weren’t popular among all theatregoers and intellectuals. One such rationalist intellectual and author of the famous Encyclopedia of Knowledge, Denis Diderot, occasioned the Academie Royale de Musique to support different conceptions of drama, such as the Italian querelle des bouffons during 1752-1754 . The debate of the Querelle des bouffons continued up to the 1770’s with a dispute between the French Gluck and the Italian Piccini. The Abbé Batteaux who articulated the traditionalist viewpoint, supported the opera of Lully and Rameau and opined that opera should be completely separated from real life and should concern itself only with royal, majestic and classical themes.
This debate was part of a constant scene of artistic renewal and theoretical controversy that was present before Beaumarchais wrote his first draft of Figaro. Beaumarchais was also not alone in trying to recognize the importance of persons of lesser than aristocratic status. The celebrated comic author, Marivaux, who was popular in the first half of the 18th century wrote plays in which secondary characters of lower rank were treated with attention, realism and were occasionally centred in the action of the plot . The Italian Opera, which featured one-act operas such as Pergolesi’s famous La Serva padrona, started a petty dispute between those who favoured the more traditional opera form represented by Rameau and Lully – the tragedie lyrique, and the Italian opera buffa, which was favoured by the more liberal and enlightenment thinkers (Diderot, Grimm, d’Holbach, Rousseau ). Didero and Beaumarchais were both theorists of the theatre and Beaumarchais, who admired Didero often adopted his ideas and worked with him in the development of a new theatrical genre, the naturalistic genre serieux. This genre abandoned the themes of classical mythology and heroism found in the works of Rameau and Lully. Focussing on domestic emotions, issues relevant to contemporary life, pronounced moral messages, middle class characters and viewpoints and written in prose, the genre serieux was a great aesthetic advancement in theatre and deeply affected Beaumarchais’ later work in The Marriage of Figaro. Beaumarchais first play (La Mère coupable) was written as part of this genre, and in his later plays he incorporated important elements from this genre including its naturalistic elements (increasing importance of stage design for example) as well as content designed for a more bourgeoisie audience. However, Beaumarchais recognized that although middle-class audiences enjoyed some elements of opera serieux, it lacked novelty and Beaumarchais decided to incorporate the tone of comic opera instead of the more moral, naturalistic elements (though Beaumarchais characters are more individualized than those of the opera ballet).
The theatrical version of Figaro was completed and performed with much attention, controversy and critical attention. When King Louis XV was presented with Beaumarchais’ first draft he took a disliking to it because he thought it was offensive to authority. Unfortunately for the King, the controversy over the merit of the play became a subject of debate in the salons of Paris. Some thought the play was scandalous and offended public decency while others thought that since the royal actors of the Comedie-Française had approved of it, and it respected the unities, there was no reason why it should not be performed. The play was also admired and approved of by Queen Marie Antoinette who ironically would benefited the least from the social tumult that occasioned the play and marked a gradual progression of events that left her beheaded and the monarchy overthrown . Her position as a woman of high aristocratic position who took a liking to a play which potentially threatened that position is interesting in light of this contradiction in interest. Nevertheless, the Queen commissioned a theatre for the purposes of putting on a restricted performance. The royal actors rehearsed and were ready to perform when Louis XV threatened their livelihood by announcing that the play was banned (after a second censor board commissioned by him had reviewed the play and banned it). The royal actors thus refused to perform since royal disfavour was a catastrophic penalty for an actor to suffer. Beaumarchais then asked the King for a group tribunal of censors (some of whom were authors, intellectuals and playwrights who wrote material of their own) to review the play. The ‘censoring’ tribunal was approved, but instead of censoring the play, the tribunal operated instead like an editing committee and the play was in fact improved by the censors who suggested revisions based on their greater collective experience as playwrights. This was a fortunate turn of events for Beaumarchais, who was still relatively new as a dramatist for the royal theatre and was somewhat limited by his previous experience writing for the opera serieux and parades for the minor theatre – influences which shows up in Figaro. Eventually, the revised play was approved by the tribunal and was performed on April 27th, 1784.
The play was an instant popular success. Because of the long process of censorship, argument and notoriety generated by the approval process, the play had effectively advertised itself to the Parisian people long before its official debut. Beaumarchais who had a record of undermining the King’s authority (often without the King knowing it) further irritated the King with his boasts of overcoming great difficulty, or as he put it, “lions and tigers”, in order to present the play. The King was annoyed by Beaumarchais and sent him to a prison for juvenile nobility, which was a kind of insult to Beaumarchais and implied that he was an impudent, “debauched” youth. Beaumarchais published a defence of his play in 1785, but by then it had already swept through Paris and had been performed extensively. The play attracted the attention of the middle class in Paris who overwhelmed the capacity of the Comedie-Française when the play was first performed. Although the play appealed to a mostly non-aristocratic audience, the tendency for the fashionable nobility to avoid the Comedie-Française altogether because of its hint of the ‘common’ or ‘bourgeois’ was lessening . Even the opera, which in the mid-eighteenth century was a completely class-stratified affair, was becoming less so with the popularity of Gluck and the new sensibilité. However a class distinction nevertheless persisted to an extent between the opera and the theatre and hinted at the censorship and revision that The Marriage of Figaro would undergo before it could play in Vienna as a royally commissioned opera. It is questionable whether The Marriage of Figaro could have debuted in the Parisian opera at all, even if it was ‘revised’ for that format. By late 1770 to early 1780, comic opera and indeed any competition including that of Picini was secondary to the popularity of Gluck’s romantically tragic opera.
While the aristocracy went to the opera and to a lesser extent, to the royal theatre, the bourgeoisie and common person who could not necessarily afford to attend the opera regularly was left with the fair and boulevard theatres and the Comedie-Française for entertainment. Under Louis XIV, the Opera, the Comedie-Française and the Comédie-Italienne received royal favour and a privileged monopoly on dramatic content while the fair and boulevard theatres were left to a “…marginal world of privately-tendered enterprise dependent upon the precarious license of the police and the immunity of the fairs. ” The marginalization of the boulevard theatre and its continuous persecution by the royal theatres effectively limited the form and variety of entertainment that it could offer. Gradually, however the ability of the royal theatre to restrict the content of the minor theatre to severely restricted dramatic forms was lessened.
In the 1780’s however, various private theatre companies owned by ambitious bourgeoisie like Gaillard and Dorfeuille worked to establish a compromise between the forced frivolity and scandalous fare of the boulevard theatres and the lofty dramatic monopoly on moral content and elevated themes occupied by the royal theatre. The trend towards a ‘free market’ of theatrical genres increasingly allowed the boulevard theatre to open houses which offered, after a 1791 edict, any genre it wished to perform. This change was condemned by a variety of conservatives who feared that “greedy entrepreneurs” would lower overall taste to that of the commoner. However, it was not just the bourgeoisie and the commoner who enjoyed the minor theatre and their later manifestations as a more legitimate public theatre. Although critics argued that the very existence of a legitimate public theatre would affect the moral sanctity of the third estate, nobility incognito and persons of repute occasioned the boulevard theatre and the public theatre before the restrictions on the boulevard theatre were removed . Thus, The Marriage of Figaro with its use of boulevard and fair theatre characteristics such as a wily servant outwitting an abusive figure of the aristocracy. Figaro, which premiered in 1784, did so during the early phases of the “moralization” of the fair theatre.

“much of the “moralization” of boulevard fare was achieved by a tremendous development of new forms; the smutty sketches and farces had been increasingly supplemented by sentimental dramas and “moral pantomimes. ”

Beaumarchais seems to have perceived the bourgeoisie and common desire to attend theatre that was both prestigious and moral yet contained the theme and satirical wit of the minor theatre.
Beaumarchais packed as much scandalous material into The Marriage of Figaro as he thought he could get away with and still have it played on the royal stage. Although the play was set in Spain to avoid directly castigating the French aristocracy, the play hardly casts the nobility in a favourable light. Of all the characters in the play, it is only Suzanne, who really maintains decent behaviour throughout the play. The Count’s adulterous desire for Figaro’s bride to be and his willingness to “…set such a price on that small favour” (deflowering her in exchange for money) clearly depict the Count as a person of dubious respectability. Here the “noble” nature of the aristocracy is shown to be nothing more than a sham, an undeserved birthright. The count isn’t even portrayed as particularly deserving of his nobility: he is not only a cheater and adulterer, but he is a buffoon who is outwitted by his own servant. The Countess as well also admits to an appreciation of Cherubin’s desire for her, which would be a scandalous implication for a woman of nobility . Another shameful characteristic of the fair theatre which is found in The Marriage of Figaro is Figaro’s appraisal of the English languages “facility” by exclaiming “God damn it!” four times. This affront to the Church was presumably a common characteristic of the fair theatre, which poked fun at venerable institutions such as the Church and the Aristocracy. Beaumarchais’ friend and fellow critic of the theatre, Denis Didero confessed to being an open atheist in one of his literary works for which he was sent to prison for a period, which may have provided inspiration for the inclusion of religious profanity in the play. Another example of the irreverent nature of this comic piece is the following line of dialogue between Brid’Oison and Figaro in Act III Scene Thirteen.
Brid’Oison I’ve seen that fe-ellow before somewhere.
Figaro With your good lady wife, Sir, in Seville: I was in her service
Brid’Oison Whe’en was that?
Figaro A little less than a year before your youngest son was born, and a
Fine lad he is, if I say so myself
Here, Figaro implies that he rendered services to Brid’oison’s wife approximately nine months before Brid’oison’s fine young son was born, which if true doesn’t say a lot about Figaro’s chastity. Either way, its an example of the type of scandalous and shocking humour which blurred the line between the fair theatres and the royal stage.
The uncensored version of The Marriage of Figaro is also a work which, corresponding with general trends in the fair theatres, incorporates serious Enlightenment criticism and ideas of realism as well. Perhaps the most important Enlightenment theme in Figaro, a theme which both Beaumarchais and Mozart considered of great importance, was the concept of social mobility and merit based status in society (rather than that of ‘noble’ inheritance). Figaro perhaps parallels Beaumarchais sentiment when he exclaims “Nobility, fortune, rank, influence: they all make a man so proud! What have you ever done to earn such wealth? You took the trouble to be born, and that’s the sum total of your efforts. For the rest a pretty ordinary man!” Figaro goes on to relate of the many obstacles he has found in any and every career tried, stumped at every turn by the aristocracy and the principle of noble birth. These statements bear interesting relation to Beaumarchais who performed many favours for the king, worked as a spy, a diplomat, publisher, royal watchmaker, financier and many other occupations and found great difficulty despite his prodigious talent in attaining the position and status of the aristocracy. Figaro’s statement is quite blatant in its ‘propagandizing’ of Enlightenment views and likely struck a chord with a bourgeoisie audience who, if the anonymous bourgeoisie author of the description of Montpellier is any indication, was increasingly thinking of their social group as the“…most useful, the most important, and the wealthiest in all kinds of countries” .
A second important feature of Figaro is the treatment of its secondary characters, which emphasize their individuality more than the traditional ‘stock’, and ‘type’ characters, which populated previous comic genres such as the Italian opera buffa and the boulevard parades. Marceline for example, an important secondary character is given space in which to lament her own narrative to the audience and is treated with sympathy after it is related that she is Figaro’s mother and her previous attraction was merely because her “blood” was calling her to him – a preposterous concept which further mocks the idea of the aristocracy. Marceline, though censored by the royal actors for reasons of offending unity of “tone”, gives a healthy account of the oppression of women by men, and of the difficulty and poverty, which pressured her to seek wealth and security through marriage. Secondary characters like Marceline do not simply act a certain way because of simple emotions like jealousy, or because they are a bad character – they are given in the case of Marceline a fairly complex system of motivations and certainly an established identity. Tertiary villains like Bazilio are given perhaps less individual treatment and generally remain villainous or at least of similar temperament throughout the play as does the other villain – the count, as he exclaims himself at the end of the play “Who wants a country wife, stuck out in the sticks [referring to the Countess] …here’s to the wife who can light a fellow’s fires [Suzanne] …her value cannot fall, and freely passing round, she serves the good of all”. The count it seems does not need to pretend at civility because he is of noble birth, and able to hide behind that façade. Suzanne’s character and her relationship to Figaro is also complex depending on whether one takes seriously Figaro’s implication that he slept with Brid’oison’s wife. She plays the role of a woman who is the fiancée of a somewhat promiscuous man, harassed by the sexual attentions of the Count and is expected to remain virtuous despite these conditions. One gets the impression that women are expected to accept their position in life without complaint. Beaumarchais gives voice to Suzanne, who like Marceline is established as a rational, clear-thinking character who speaks up for herself and the cause of injustice “…just let the wife start making eyes, she’s punished with the label of slut and slag…how can the weak hope for justice, when the power that makes the laws is the power of men?” The importance of rational thinking is clearly emphasized at the end of the play when the fourth wall between the audience and the actors is broken and Suzanne announces “If this gay and giddy piece of work encloses a moral or a lesson you [the audience] should heed, its not about flirtation, which is but a quirk, so give grace to reason, for that is what we need.” This last emphasis on the importance of reason is a crucial Enlightenment message which was advanced by almost all of the true enlightenment thinkers including Kant, Didero, Voltaire, Grimm and others as well as by Beaumarchais himself.
In addition to realistic and naturalistic conventions in the script, the theatre in the 1780’s was a marked contrast to the theatre of previous decades that was partly due to the efforts of Beaumarchais, Grimm, Didero, Marmontel, La Motte and other theorists, critics and dramatists of the theatre. Beaumarchais and Didero were not alone in their constant demand for a theatre, which appealed to the publics demand for ‘novelty’, or new and improved types of theatre. The technical side of theatre and stage production was constantly under improvement in the 18th century. Although Voltaire scorned the popular opera he conceded that the success of the spectacle was due in part to elaborate props and stage effects . Voltaire was also an early playwright and acclaimed tragedian who incorporated relevant social and political issues into his theatre which by the 1850’s expressed the viewpoint of the philosophes and rationalist, liberal circles . The Marriage of Figaro and many of its comic and dramatic concepts arose out of the genres of previous comic dramatists such as Moliere and Marivaux. Marivaux who was fond of romantic themes and young love (i.e. characters like Cherubin, who’s very name connotes Greco-Roman mythology) depicted less important characters and persons of minor rank as “…real people of genuine human dignity…”
A further literary current, which developed in the 18th century and was influential in the theatre was the bourgeoisie novel. Although the novel originally imitated the tragedie lyrique by depicting aristocratic heroes and themes, the popular novel evolved into a literary form in which the bourgeoisie character and person of lower rank was featured. “The social mixture in the novel reflects the growing wealth and aspirations of the bourgeoisie, which came to see itself increasingly as the most worthy of the social classes in France because of its virtue, thrift, energy and indeed patriotism. It is significant that in the finest French novel of the last quarter of the eighteenth century, Les Liaisons dangereuses, the characters of the highest social rank are also the source of vice and corruption” . This is not to imply that novels were limited to France, in fact they became increasingly widespread throughout Austria, France, England, Germany and other parts of Europe. The spread of dramatists who also wrote fiction as well as other forms such as political pamphlets and enlightenment material (Marivaux, Beaumarchais, Diderot, Voltair, etc) also contributed to the development of a novel which mirrored the themes of the royal and boulevard theatre (which in the last quarter of the eighteenth century was becoming increasingly legitimate). The more realistic theatrical subject of lower and middle class persons who were in no way related to gods was mirrored by the increasing attention to realistic stage conventions. Diderot who wished to raise the status of the once insignificant theatre stage designer also encouraged actors to wear clothes that reflected their role and not their socio-economic status . The habit of actors wearing their finery was related to the unrealistic declamation rhetorical style of acting, which was gradually done away with by reformers such as Diderot and Beaumarchais. Beaumarchais status as a man who had tried many professions and struggled to earn courtly favour and success on the basis of merit instead of lineage was similar to another famous artists efforts to find courtly patronage and prestige.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart who had found a welcoming environment in the liberal and comparatively welcoming court of Joseph II of Austria was longing to write an opera and suggested to the poet Da Ponte an operatic revision of Beaumarchais The Marriage of Figaro. Mozart’s reasons for making an opera based on The Marriage of Figaro was probably less because of the political content (most of which was excised by Da Ponte at the emperors bequest), but there is still a definite solidarity that can be detected between the Enlightenment and rational ideals held by Beaumarchais and Mozart’s own personal views in the court of the “revolutionary emperor” (ironically Joseph II was to find out that the idea of a revolutionary autocracy was something of a contradiction). To begin with, of all the possibilities for European operas and plays which Mozart could have developed, the Marriage of Figaro already had an established reputation as a scandalous and notorious play. One can presume that although Mozart knew the play had to be censored, his intent with the play would be to demonstrate his artistic abilities, push the limits of the liberal Austrian court and perhaps irritate the traditional Austrian aristocracy all at the same time.
A further consideration that likely inclined Mozart towards The Marriage of Figaro was Figaro’s statement of how it was necessary for him to live by his wits where men of stature were inclined to inherit power and prestige through noble birth and political marriage. Mozart who earned a living through his musical talents and abilities in fact appears to favour the ‘lowly born’ man who is able to marry for love and live by his wits instead of his title “…we [ lowly born, humble and poor people] do not need a wealthy life, for our riches, being in our brains die with us.” Mozart is quite possibly sarcastic when he emphasizes his class as lowly born, humble and poor and the aristocracy as inherently the opposite. The emphasis on “not needing a wealthy life” is indicative of Mozart’s happiness without property and title (as long as patronage was assured from the royal court). By the time Mozart was writing the opera with Da Ponte, he had joined the Masonry one year earlier and associated primarily with his preferred social group of the ‘new nobility ’Mozart who existed tenuously at the fringe of Viennese courtly society was not in quite the same position of relative security that Beaumarchais was in. Although Mozart had friends and allies, his ability to openly criticize autocratic institutions and vent frustration at the social barriers represented by the inherited elite was limited by his need for royal patronage. If Mozart was to criticize the nobility and reinforce Enlightenment themes of realism and social mobility, he had to do it subtly.
The indications that the Opera, although censored, still contained hints of resistance to the autocracy can be found in Mozart’s musical structure and in parts of the operatic text. Since the opera was transformed into Italian and the prose form altered to an Italian lyrical form, some changes in text had to be made. Also, the structure of Beaumarchais’ five-act structure had to be reduced to four acts, which were split in two with an intermission in the middle. In addition, the emperor commanded that the play be censored considerably so as to remove the more anti-establishment content such as Figaro’s soliloquy. However, since the play was performed so relatively close to the French premiere of the play (only two years after) why was a reference made to the censorship of the play in the opera version? Instead of Figaro’s long soliloquy, he says instead at the beginning of Act V Scene III, “woman….there isn’t an animal in creation which doesn’t follow it’s instinct; and is yours then to betray?…The rest I’ll not say everyone knows it already”. This is such a blatant reference to censorship, Figaro is even addressing the audience when he says “everyone”, which breaks the fourth wall separating audience and performer. For the liberal and Enlightenment oriented ‘new’ nobility (many of whom were Freemasons) who watched the opera at the Burgtheater, this would have told them that censorship had taken place and to be aware of the limits of Joseph II’s liberal ideals. In the same year, Joseph II demonstrated his limited tolerance for dissent and disapproval from the liberal and Masonic lodges and limited their number – a sign of sweeping autocratic measures, which would be instituted, later with the fall of the Bastille in France.
Mozart also worked subtly to reinforce the feminist and enlightenment diatribe against autocratic and unjust institutions by emphasizing the social and political criticism which was distributed to other characters . During the first stanza of one of Marceline’s aria’s (derived from Act III Scene XVI in the play, she sings first of the passion and tenderness between women and men the orchestra sounds a dissonant chord at the end of this stanza as though to add a note of sarcasm. In Marceline’s second stanza, she changes her tone to an angry and vindictive expression of the condition of poor hapless women who are oppressed by men, which clearly is an enlightenment point of view, which in many rational circles recognized women as equal with men . In the Opera, after Marcelinas aria, Bazilio has an interesting interlude in which he compares himself favourably to the young and foolish Figaro. However at the end of this aria, he recounts a story of how a fairy gave him “something rough and hairy” – the hair of an ass, and how the asses' skin kept him dry in the rain of a storm and later protected him from a ferocious beast because of its smell. This interesting anecdote has an ambiguous meaning but it is quite plausible that the “asses skin” refers dubiously to the façade or cloak of nobility which the aristocracy use to justify their position in society . The Count in the Marriage of Figaro “hides” behind his nobility, the “asses skin” to escape the righteous wrath of Suzanne and his lonely and sexually desperate wife, the Countess. In addition to these orchestral emphases on various Enlightenment arias in the opera, Mozart was very fond of mixing and interweaving different musical forms together to form duets, trios, sextets and choruses to create “a kind of social mixing and individualism. Among his contemporaries, Mozart was known for emphasizing individual arias and giving specific voice to each character in scenes with multiple librettos and tenors. This attests to Mozarts style of naturalism and realism which tailors music to the text and not the other way around. Unlike music of the French sensibilité such as Gluck which emphasizes one dominant musical theme for maximum emotional impact, Mozart utilizes a more complex blending of different and individuated scores all orchestrated together to form a dynamic, energetic sound. Although Mozart was a liberal composer and emphasized the Enlightenment subtext in the opera, the overall status of the work as anti-establishment in the same way that Beaumarchais’ original play was, is put into doubt by the social reversals of opera buffa.
In the opera buffa, the humour and comic situation was dependent on social reversals. The reversals commonly used by the opera buffa were (1) the overthrow of a patriarch in hierarchal society, (2) the triumph of a servant or person of lower stature in his master’s house, (3) and the overturn of a masculine dominance by women . The difficulty in these types of reversals is discerning what the intent is. How does the opera version of The Marriage of Figaro, which appears to be a mixture of all three reversals, how does this version function in the context of opera buffa? Interpretation of the message of Enlightenment content in this opera is dependent on the individual but the comic structure of the opera functions in an important way with respect to this content. For the older aristocratic order and those fearful of liberalization and “dangerous” art, the opera buffa offered a sort of disguise for enlightenment content. Perhaps only those looking for indications of Enlightenment content (beyond the obvious plot structure) would find it and the play could escape criticism by being claiming that it was all in good fun. By reversing the “attack on the autocracy and systems of authority (patriarchy etc) the opera (as well as the play) can exhibit content that would be intolerable in a genre which depended on literal interpretation. Depending on whether one views the social reversal of The Marriage of Figaro as just another opera buffa reversal which serves to perpetuate the autocratic order, or as a disguise for Enlightenment content, changes the meaning behind the opera version.
In conclusion we can recount the similarities between the theatrical version and the opera version in terms of realism and Enlightenment critique. The play, with a substantial following before it was first performed (including the Queen Marie Antoinette) was able to go farther, despite excessive censorship, in its portrayal of the wicked nobility preying on the talented and witty servant or middle class person (since Figaro as we find out is the son of a learned and educated man). The play’s use of actors with costumes which matched their roles, increased development of individual identity and focus on themes which concerned the common people put in a more realistic category than the opera’s of Lully, Rameau (or even Gluck). With Mozart’s opera version, the realism is still there in his musical individuation of voice and ability to combine the different voices together emphasizing different themes and different characters with a diverse orchestral score. Unlike the work of Lully which featured music which was not always concerned with the narrative, since dance was an important part of his operas and often featured imagery (which Mozart did at times as well), Mozart’s music was far more centred on the individual singers and a rising and falling dramatic arc. The opera version, which spread enlightenment critique among the different characters (Suzanne, Marceline, Bazilio) continued to emphasize themes of social injustice and liberal values but to a less obvious extent than in the theatrical version. The Opera which was in Italian found its audience among a more wealthy ‘new’ nobility which was more open to controversial works and the values of liberalism and social mobility.

Bibliography

Artz, B Frederick The Enlightenment in France
Kent State University Press, 1968

The Figaro Plays Translated by Graham Anderson,
Absolute Classics, 1993

Cardy, Michael Studies of Voltaire and the Enlightenment:
The Literary Doctrines of Marmontel Vol. 210
The Voltaire Foundation, Oxford. 1982

Darnton, Robert The Great Cat Massacre and other episodes in French Cultural History
First Vintage Books Edition, 1985

Johnson, James H. Listening In Paris: A Cultural History
University of California Press., 1995.

Boulevard Theatre and Revolution in Eighteenth Century Paris,
Umi Research Press, 1984 pp.32

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