Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro is an opera classic; a work, which despite on the surface appearing to be a frothy farce, is deep down one of the most complete commentaries on the human condition ever to be performed on the stage.
Its source was Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’ seditious 1784 play, La Folle Journée, ou le mariage de Figaro (The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro), which had upset the social mores of pre-revolutionary Paris by suggesting that servants had both the intelligence and guile to outwit their masters. At pains to avoid further controversy - after all, their patron was Joseph II, the Holy Roman Emperor and Marie Antoinette’s brother - Lorenzo Da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist, pared back the original drama’s political content, but none of its humour and pathos.
Figaro and Susanna are to be married. But Count Almaviva has his own plans for his wife’s maid. Despite his statement to the contrary, the Count has absolutely no intention of renouncing his right, as lord of the manor, to bed whoever he likes in his household and that includes his servants on their wedding night. And so begins a sequence of madcap schemes - hiding in cupboards, sending false love letters and donning improbable disguises - all designed to humiliate Almaviva, but which have the rest of characters tying themselves up in knots too.