The Marriage of Figaro (Italian: Le nozze…
May 1786 CE
The opera's libretto is based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"), which had first been performed in 1784.
It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.
The opera will become a cornerstone of the repertoire and will appear consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas.
Beaumarchais's earlier play The Barber of Seville had already made a successful transition to opera in a version by Paisiello.
Beaumarchais's Mariage de Figaro was at first banned in Vienna; the Emperor, Joseph II, had stated that "since the piece contains much that is objectionable, I therefore expect that the Censor shall either reject it altogether, or at any rate have such alterations made in it that he shall be responsible for the performance of this play and for the impression it may make", after which the Austrian Censor duly forbade performing the German version of the play.
Mozart's librettist had managed to get official approval for an operatic version which will eventually achieve great success.
The opera is the first of three collaborations between Mozart and Da Ponte; their later collaborations are Don Giovanni and Così fan tutte.
It is Mozart who originally selected Beaumarchais's play and brought it to Da Ponte, who had turned it into a libretto in six weeks, rewriting it in poetic Italian and removing all of the original's political references.
In particular, Da Ponte has replaced Figaro's climactic speech against inherited nobility with an equally angry aria against unfaithful wives.
Contrary to the popular myth, the libretto had been approved by the Emperor before any music was written by Mozart.
The Imperial Italian opera company pays Mozart four hundred and fifty florins for the work; this is three times his (low) yearly salary when he had worked as a court musician in Salzburg.
Da Ponte is paid two hundred florins.
Despite the great success of Die Entführung aus dem Serail, Mozart had done little operatic writing for the next four years, producing only two unfinished works and the one-act Der Schauspieldirektor.
He had focused instead on his career as a piano soloist and writer of concertos.
Around the end of 1785, Mozart moved away from keyboard writing and began his famous operatic collaboration with Da Ponte.