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- Herausgeber: Icon Books
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Great Operas
- Sprache: Englisch
Although the story of Figaro's success in preventing the Count of Almaviva's seduction of his fiancée Susanna was politically explosive, it was tolerated in the court of the relatively enlightened Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Mozart's opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, uses a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and was premièred in Vienna in 1786. It was based on a famous play by the Frenchman Beaumarchais, a sequel to The Barber of Seville. Characters including Figaro, the Countess, Cherubino the page, Doctor Bartolo and Barberina the gardener's daughter sing a succession of famous arias – such as Se vuol ballare, Non più andrai, Dove sono, Porgi amor and Voi, che sapete, to mention but a few – in which Mozart's musical characterisation is legendary. Written by Michael Steen, author of the acclaimed The Lives and Times of the Great Composers, 'Short Guides to Great Operas' are concise, entertaining and easy to read books about opera. Each is an opera guide packed with useful information and informed opinion, helping to make you a truly knowledgeable opera-goer, and so maximising your enjoyment of a great musical experience. Other 'Short Guides to Great Operas' that you may enjoy include Così fan tutte, Don Giovanni and The Barber of Seville.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012
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Published in the UK in 2012 by Icon Books Ltd,
Omnibus Business Centre, 29–41 North Road, London N7 9DP
email: [email protected]
www.iconbooks.co.uk
ISBN: 978-1-84831-459-7 (ePub format)
ISBN: 978-1-84831-474-0 (Adobe ebook format)
Text copyright © 2012 Michael Steen
The author has asserted his moral rights.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, or by any means, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.
Typesetting by Marie Doherty
CONTENTS
Title page
Copyright
PREFACE
USING THIS EBOOK
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
MOZART’S THE MARRIAGE OF FIGARO
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
WHO’S WHO AND WHAT’S WHAT
THE INTERVAL: TALKING POINTS
Characterisation
Cherubino
Political aspects
Length
Success?
Some actual tomfoolery
ACT BY ACT
Act 1
Act 2
Act 3
Act 4
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Sources of quotes
Other sources
NOTES
Short Guides to Great Operas
PREFACE
This guide is aimed at the ordinary opera-goer and opera-lover, usually a busy person who wants to know the essentials of the opera but has little time to grasp them.
It provides key background information to The Marriage of Figaro, told engagingly by someone who knows the opera intimately.
It is light, easy to read, and entertaining. Relevant information has been carefully selected to enhance your appreciation of Mozart’s work.
It is authoritative, but not dense or academic. It is unburdened with the clutter that can easily be obtained elsewhere. It concentrates on information that it will help you to know in advance.
Read quickly before going to the opera or listening to it at home, you will get the very best out of the performance and have a truly enjoyable experience.
Opera can be a great social occasion. Being knowledgeable and well-informed, you’ll appreciate this magical art-form much more if you read this first.
I hope you enjoy the opera!
Michael Steen
USING THIS EBOOK
A very quick grasp of the opera can be gained by reading the opening section on ‘The opera and its composer’ and the ensuing ‘Who’s who and what’s what’. Further elaboration may be found in the sections entitled ‘The interval: talking points’ and ‘Act by act’.
The footnotes and boxes are an integral part of the information. The reader is encouraged to go to these by clicking on the links.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Michael Steen OBE studied at the Royal College of Music, was organ scholar at Oriel College, Oxford, and has been chairman of both the RCM Society and the Friends of the V&A Museum. He is a trustee of the Gerald Coke Handel Foundation and Anvil Arts, and Treasurer of The Open University.
MOZART’STHEMARRIAGE OF FIGARO
A SHORT GUIDE TO A GREAT OPERA
The opera and its composer
Who’s who and what’s what
The interval: talking points
Act by act
THE OPERA AND ITS COMPOSER
‘Sheer perfection’ was how Brahms described Mozart’s groundbreaking opera. ‘Never,’ he said, ‘has anything like this been created, not even by Beethoven.’
The première of The Marriage of Figaro took place on 1 May 1786 in the Imperial Court Theatre (the Burgtheater) in Vienna. Mozart was almost halfway through a ten-year period he spent freelancing in Vienna. This followed his dismissal – ‘with a kick on the arse’, as Mozart himself put it – by the chamberlain of the Archbishop of Salzburg, his former employer, who found the young musician totally impossible to manage.
Mozart composed Figaro five and a half years before his death, aged only 35, in late 1791. He was at the height of his career, working so hard that his family back in Salzburg hardly ever heard from him.
At this time, Mozart was enjoying considerable success, particularly from subscription concerts, and living a handsome lifestyle. But, as the chamberlain had warned him, celebrity status was brittle. Mozart’s father was very worried about the powerful cabals ranged against his son. Competition from other composers was intense. Mozart’s popularity would decline. As it waned, fees from operas and foreign touring became an increasingly important source of income. His fee for Figaro, however, amounted to less than one year’s rent of his expensive accommodation.
Figaro was based on a successful but thoroughly disrespectful play, La Folle Journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro, written by Beaumarchais, which had finally been allowed its first public performance in Paris two years earlier.
This play about love in all its guises, good and bad, features an insubordinate valet, a duplicitous noble and a flighty wife. It followed the French playwright’s earlier but less contentious comedy featuring the same characters, Le Barbier de Séville. This had recently been staged extremely successfully as an opera by the celebrated and wealthy Neapolitan composer Giovanni Paisiello (1740–1816).1 It would be a further 30 years until Rossini’s version of TheBarber, with which we are today far more familiar.
Mozart had studied more than a hundred libretti before he chose the Beaumarchais play. He then found a librettist in whom he could have confidence. This was Lorenzo da Ponte, who he had met a few years earlier. Da Ponte cut the play considerably but, despite this, the opera was ‘the longest and most complicated one ever staged in the Burgtheater’, and is almost always itself subject to cuts today.
The Viennese première starred, in the title role, the celebrity bass-baritone buffo
