Well, yesterday’s opera was a re-run – of a performance from 1952. It was selected because two – actually three, but the third is lesser known today – of the stars were born in 1923, so would, had they lived, been 100 this year. (Another of the stars, also lesser known today, died this year a month before her 99th birthday. ( No, the Met never throws anything out – and that’s a good thing IMO. Not that I don’t emulate it too slavishly myself.) Le Nozze de Figaro (usually translated “The Marriage of Figaro,” but “Figaro’s Wedding” would be more accurate) is exceptionally complex – certainly at least the first time one sees it one would benefit from a scorecard to keep track of who is seducing (or trying to seduce) whom. To me the highlight, at least for humor, is when this elderly lady is demanding Figaro marry her instead of Susanna because the terms of her lending him money included that he would marry her if he couldn’t pay. He gets out of it only because a birthmark proves she is his mother. That’s funny enough, but his fiancée, who has just raised the money, comes in just as he is hugging his mother, thinks the worst, and slaps him. The dialogue changes to “And this is my mother, she says so herself, she says so herself. And this is my father, he says so himself, he says so himself,” with just the right number of repeats to make it funnier and funnier. But there is plenty more to stimulate snickers and actual laughs. It’s all fun and games – unless you remember how much life and death power aristocrats actually had over their households – and even that kind of adds to the fun as the servants get the last laugh. Pierre Beaumarchais wrote three “Figaro” plays, and all three have been made into operas by different composers – I believe all more than once. But the two which have lived and the one which I hope will were all by different composers – first by Mozart with the second play, secondly by Rossini with the first play, and finally, the third by John Corigliano with the third play and his own touches (it’s weird – but it aputres the spirits of the Figaros and the Almavivas perfectly.
But enough of Count Almaviva. Let’s move to out own American Count, The Count. He has a timely message.
