Director's Notes
By Peter Watson
The recalcitrant actor/singer faces down the director: ?Yes, but I don't actually know what I'm doing. Who am I?? The director pales ? does he know what he's doing? This is what nightmares are made of, especially when confronted by an established operatic masterpiece such as the Mozart/da Ponte Le Nozze di Figaro. Who is this Monsieur Figaro? Beaumarchais himself? Simple Monsieur Caron? ?Fi(ls) Caro(n), the consonant dropped according to the pronunciation of the day? Extraordinary watchmaker, apprentice apothecary, horse doctor, almost poet, almost playwright, journalist, politician, concierge of Aguas-Frescas, spy-cum-courier to be, risking his neck in service of his master the Count shortly to take up ministerial post in London, man of no known parentage, yet man of the future, subversive yet above all intelligence and wit personified? A void waiting to be filled? Preferably by an actor or singer of genius? Supporter of the American War of Independence, arms supplier to Washington, fuelled by a healthy and common enough French loathing of the English? Barber Womanizer, obsessive timekeeper?
In 1989 the French director Antoine Vitez directed Beaumarchais' play at the Comédie Française (ten years earlier he had directed the opera in Florence with Riccardo Muti conducting.) He writes: ?I was convinced the da Ponte/Mozart work was superior to Beaumarchais. I thought Beaumarchais' text too flat, prosaic, prolix and unmusical. I thought the play all too obvious ? a brilliant scenario for material all too insubstantial. Although I now think the opposite! I thought all the depth had been put there by Mozart (and da Ponte) in the ?mise-en-scène'. Mozart had not only supplied the music by the characterization ? for example the Countess, dominated by nostalgia, regret and sadness in the great Act 2 aria. The opera's music was itself a ?mise-en-scène' of ?Le mariage de Figaro' the play.' For Vitez, then, there were two masterpieces, the Beaumarchais now displaying a finesse of writing, almost as though musically annotated. Reading the play in French, you're reminded that the writer not only taught the harp to Louis XV's daughters but that he was a consummate dramatist. As in Oscar Wilde's plays the banter is brilliant, even the smaller roles are allowed to shine. Vivacity and energy created through short replies, ellipsis, intelligent wordplay, fleeting allusions to hidden depths, in fact the whole firework display the Count is to forbid in the chestnut grove of Beaumarchais' Act. 5.
No wonder it appealed to Mozart, both linguistically and by the complexity of its structure that led him to more ensembles than an opera audience had ever heard. And Mozart must surely have approved of the subversion and the danger inherent in the play. Of course there's a touch of rococo confection about the cháteau and its gardens, but it's a real place inhabited by very real people. The Count's threat to revive the infamous ?droit de Seigneur' (his right to the first night) to satisfy his obsessive desire for Figaro's future bride Susanna should be truly appalling, especially coming from such a charming, elegant man, and remind us of the worst excesses of illegitimate power in that ancient feudal system. And yet as La Fontaine wrote in the preface to his ?Fables' of 1668: ?I don't call gaiety that which provokes laughter; but a certain charm, an agreeable atmosphere one can give to all kinds of subjects, even the most serious.' So the Count is condemned to come face to face with his adolescent alter-ego ? the sexually rampant ?brat' Cherubino, whilst his deserted wife finds sensual consolation with the same impulsive youth during the erotically fetishistic charades on pins, underskirts and ribbons tinged with blood.
In the original virtuoso monologue of the final act, Figaro the self-made man defines the Count: ?Nobility, fortune, rank, and that makes a man proud. What did you do to achieve that? You put yourself through the agony of being born and nothing else?' À propos, Lytton Strachey wrote: ?In that sentence one can hear ? far off, but distinct ? the flash and snap of the guillotine'. But how many people at the first night in Paris in 1784 were serenely unaware of the precipice towards which the ?ancien régime' was sliding, as they stood and applauded the playwright to the skies. Beaumarchais was no anti-monarchist; he had produced a damning critique of social structures based on feudalism that was certain. Mozart and da Ponte must have breathed a sigh of relief to escape the ban that Beaumarchais' play had received in the Vienna of Joseph II. So mistreated by the Archbishop, Count Colloredo, the Salzburg where he served as court organist, Mozart surely felt very close to Beaumarchais and the kindred souls can clearly be detected in the opera. And no cuts, no censorship, can alter that.
Courtesy of Boston Lyric Opera.
