There’s a lot of sexual politics in Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. Maybe that’s why I love it, and why the opera remains so popular round the world.
I was at the dress rehearsal of a wonderful production coming up at London’s Royal Opera House, with a very strong cast including the South African soprano Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha as the Countess.
The revival of the production by David McVicar seems conventional at first, all liveried servants and 18th century wigs and flummery; but the power of the music and characterisation grips you as fast as ever, 240 years on from the premiere in Vienna.
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The nub of the plot is the struggle by Figaro and Susanna, on the eve of their wedding, to prevent their master Count Almaviva from exercising his Droit de Seigneur. This is the shocking feudal right of a lord to bed a servant girl on her wedding night before her husband can sleep with her.
When Figaro the count’s valet learns of this threat, and the pressure being put on his fiancée, he sings the great angry aria “Se vuol ballare, signor contino”: If you want dance, Mr Count, I will call the tune. I will be the dancing master!
So the stage is set for the two men to fight for sexual supremacy. Each of them in turn are tormented by anger and jealousy.
MOZART’S SEXUAL POLITICS
The count is a bully and serial philanderer. The Countess is desperately unhappy and humiliated by his continual affairs. She expresses the deepest feelings in the opera, in the famous arias “Porgi, amor, qualche ristoro” – (“Grant, love, some comfort”) and “Dove sono I bei momenti – (“Where are they, the beautiful moments?”) She retains dignity and grace in her suffering.
Then there is the curious comic figure of the Count’s page boy, the young adolescent Cherubino. This part is normally sung by a female soprano, and the character is constantly falling in love with the women of the court, hiding from the Count in their bedrooms and very much at home dressed up in women’s clothes as part of the deceptions.
Cherubino is played and sung brilliantly by the svelte Bulgarian mezzo soprano Svetlina Stoyanova. Again there is real emotion in the aria “Voi che sapete che cosa è amor” – (“You ladies who know what love is, is it what I’m suffering from?”) The boy naively describes the stormy confusion of his feelings. Women will have to interpret it for him!
Cherubino is a young man with a very strong female side. I was reminded of Shakespeare’s cross-dressing characters such as Rosalind and Viola. He is a comical teenage type but also a touchstone of attractive and natural humanity.
When Figaro scares him with tales of his harsh life to come in the army, in the rollicking comic aria: “Non piu andrai“– (“No more gallivanting”), it could equally be seen as a satire on male military bravado and codes of honour.
MOZART’S SEXUAL POLITICS
A major theme is the interplay of power and sex. At one point the Count is scandalised that his servants might enjoy pleasures that he is denied. And everyone has to live within the restrictions of the Count’s total financial and legal power over them. The women are forced into deception and manipulation.
But they recognise their feelings and respond to them. They are not simply driven, like the Count, to use sex to demonstrate their status.
Figaro’s last big aria was to have been a denunciation of the aristocracy. But the words were changed by the librettist Da Ponte into a condemnation of unfaithful wives, to overcome censorship by the Austrian emperor.
The opera is a marvel because of Mozart’s ability to write great lilting tunes, and to have as many as five characters singing at once, all expressing different emotions, but somehow creating musical harmony.
It’s simultaneously high drama and something as abstract and formally elegant as an instrumental concerto. Perhaps it’s the nature of Mozart’s imagination that he always heard patterns of notes and harmony as if they were telling a human story.
If we compare the men and women in the opera, Susanna and the Countess are driven by love. In contrast, in the final scene in the darkness of the garden, Figaro and the Count are driven by rage and jealousy, each of them convinced that their spouse is deceiving them.
In between the grown men and women is the androgynous character of Cherubino. The attractive youth reminds us of the great feminine charm of much of Mozart’s music, it’s sheer prettiness and dance-like quality.
When the happy ending comes, it is only made possible by the Countess’ generosity in forgiving her erring and domineering husband. Her love heals the wound.
The conclusion is in the spirit of Shakespeare’s comedies, like the quadruple wedding in As You Like It, where there is a rustic dance led by the Spirit Hymen. Or The Winter’s Tale, where the heart of the jealous King Leontes is finally unfrozen as his wife is restored to life, and their daughter Perdita returns.
This is a feelgood opera. And these are essentially female triumphs. They are a celebration of fertility and the possibility of new life. Nature and natural impulses are shown to be wiser than the legalistic rules and hierarchies of a patriarchal society.
https://www.rbo.org.uk/tickets-and-events/the-marriage-of-figaro-david-mcvicar-details