Eighteenth Century Italian Theatre

In the eighteenth century Italy was not yet a unified country. Instead, the Italian peninsula was occupied by several different nations. The Austrians held a large portion of the country, the Papal States held Rome and its surrounding area, Naples and Sicily were separate kingdoms, and Venice was a republic. At the end of the century Napoleon conquered the entire peninsula, and it became the property of France until 1814.  Still, much Italian culture continued to be exported throughout Europe. Italian composers and architects worked for courts all across the continent, even to places as distant as St. Petersburg, Russia, newly built in the Italian style.

You might say that the theatre in eighteenth century Italy played second fiddle to opera, which had been tremendously popular since the mid-seventeenth century. Most playwrights in Italy also worked on opera libretti, and made more of their money writing for opera than for the theatre.  Metastasio, the most important serious Italian dramatist in the early 18^th century, for example, focused more attention on operas than on straight plays.

The theatrical center of eighteenth century Italy was Venice, with 14 active theatres, more than in any other European city at the time.  Many of these theatres produced more opera than plays, but spoken drama flourished in Venice as well.  The two best-known writers worked in Venice, and both wrote comedies still regularly performed throughout Europe and the U.S.

      

Carlo Gozzi and Carlo Goldoni both made use of the popular form that had dominated the entire continent for nearly two centuries: commedia dell’arte.  This physical, improvised, low comedy with stock characters, featured young lovers blocked from their amorous pursuits by older “blocking” characters. Comic servants (some very clever, some rather stupid) found ways of fooling the old farts and getting the young lovers together.

After 200 years of improvised variations on a theme, by the mid-eighteenth century, commedia had become repetitious, a tired old form.  And it didn’t fit into the trend towards sentimentalism in theatre, which as by now you can guess was spreading throughout all of Europe.  Both Gozzi and Goldoni had solutions, radically 

different in approach; both were bitter rivals.  Let’s look at Gozzi first.  This aristocratic and conservative fellow loved commedia, advocated keeping the masks that identified the stock characters, and insisted that at least portions of the action remain improvised for the sake of spontaneity.   Using masks and partial improvisation, 

Gozzi created new and fanciful plots that he called “fiabe” or

“fantastic parodies.”  He used grotesque, absurd, and magical plots

that he connected to the real and current world through satire.  Among Gozzi’s most famous plays were Turandot (later operatized by Puccini) and The King Stag (based on stories from the Indian epic Ramayana). 

Here is the intricate plot of another Gozzi play, The Love of Three Oranges, (operatized by Prokofiev in the twentieth century):

A melancholy prince, Tartaglia, is doomed to pine for the Three Oranges, which are kept in an enchanted castle.  The prince retrieves the Oranges, but after he’s given them to his servant Truffaldino, the two become separated.  Although Truffaldino has been warned that the oranges must not be cut open unless a fountain of water is nearby, he gets very thirsty and opens one -- a young girl appears, and begs for water. The terrified Truffaldino, who has no water, cuts the second orange open so that the young girl can drink, but instead another young girl appears, begs for water – and both die of thirst! Truffaldino is about to cut open the third orange, when the prince finds him, goes to a lake, opens the orange, and when a beautiful young maiden appears, he gives her water from the lake – she revives!  It seems she’s a princess, and the two plan to marry, but when the prince goes off to prepare the wedding, a wicked Moorish girl turns the princess into a dove, and takes the princess’s place! Truffaldino saves the day by restoring the princess to human form. Curtain!

Gozzi mocked the new sentimental mode, and among his favorite targets for ridicule were the comedies of Carlo Goldoni.

Goldoni wrote libretti for opera seria and opera buffo (serious and comic operas) throughout his life, in fact one of his collaborators 

was Antonio Vivaldi.  Goldoni began his career by writing soggetti (scenarios) for commedia troupes, but he soon came to despise the same old tricks played time after time, and began to experiment with both character and plot.  He still made extensive use of commedia’s stock characters, but sentimentalized and humanized them.  For example, Pantalone, the old buffoon and butt of servants’ humor in commedia, became in Goldoni’s plays a rather sweet old fellow, 

who  sometimes is even heroic.  In one play the merchant Pantalone’s daughter has married into a decadent aristocratic family.  Pantalone uses virtue and common sense to salvage the situation.  Note that Goldoni is playing here on the “marriage” between the aristocracy and middle class merchant families. He also wrote a treatise in 1750 called The Comic Theatre.  In it he insisted on getting rid of masks, and especially getting rid of improvisation, on using elegant speech on stage, and focusing on “real life” situations.

It’s not that Goldoni’s plays weren’t funny.  His writing certainly sentimentalized commedia, but it was a far cry from the comédie larmoyante of La Chaussée.  His best plays, which include The 

Servant of Two Masters and Mistress of the Inn are very clever and hilariously funny.  In the latter, Mirandolina, the fun-loving and beautiful inn-keeper, is wooed by a decadent nobleman and a rich count, and she herself cleverly woos & wins an indifferent Cavalier, but after much comic action in which the mistress of the inn makes fools of the men, she finally marries the man she truly loves, a servant at her inn.

   

So while Gozzi moves towards fantasy and satire and retains much of old-style commedia, Goldoni moves towards realism and sentimentality, and away from standard commedia.  The rivalry between the two was public and bitter, and caused Goldon to leave Venice for for good. He ended his days in Paris where he wrote for the Comédie Italienne in the French capital. 

      

After the eighteenth century Gozzi’s plays went out of fashion until they were discovered by avant-garde directors in the early 20th century.  In the last 30 years, Gozzi has become quite popular

 in American regional theatres, especially in more experimental ones like ART in Cambridge Mass.  At ART Julie Taymor designed a production of The King Stag and produced an amazing version of The Green Bird off Broadway in the late 1980s, which Doctor Jack was lucky enough to see.  On a personal not, the good doctor’s colleague Norm Johnson directed a lovely production The King Stag at Ithaca College in the mid-1990s.

      

Goldoni’s plays have enjoyed regular if not frequent productions in America’s best regional theatres, and are very popular in Italy and on stages throughout Europe.

Towards the end of the eighteenth century, one more writer of serious plays deserves some recognition.  Vittorio Alfieri wrote using classical themes (one of his plays is titled Cleopatra), but he used these themes for patriotic and political purposes, as a protest to foreign occupation of Italy.  Alfieri became known as one of Italy’s first writers in the Romantic mode, but is seldom produced today.

More important than eighteenth century Italian dramatists, however, were Italian designers.  Renaissance Italians had used forced perspective and the single vanishing point as the basis for stage design.  They now produced a new style of scenic spectacle that swept the continent.  The most important name in design is 

Bibiena design

Bibiena, a family from Bologna full of designers.  Ferdinando, the oldest, invented scena per angolo -- angled scenery.  Instead of a single vanishing point, Ferdinando created two or three different vistas.  In addition, Ferdinando made the buildings in his set designs look gigantic by extending theme beyond the top of the proscenium arch, not letting the audience see all of them.  The feeling in scena per angolo was of monumental size and splendor.  Other Bibiena family members took up Ferdinando’s new invention in their designs and traveled throughout Europe introducing the new style, which was especially popular in opera. 

     

In addition to designing settings in the grand style, the Bibiena were frequently called upon to design theatres. On of the most famous of these (which you can visit by the way - Dr Jack did!) is the Teatro Scientifico in Mantua. Below are a few photos of it:

Filippo Juvarra, working in Naples in 1706, used scena per 

angolo with a curvilinear approach.  In Juvarra’s method, the eyes of the audience are led in a circular pattern back to the foreground, as opposed to off in the distance(s) in the Bibiena style. 

      

The chariot and pole method was used to change settings, and most of the monumentality created by scena per angolo was painted on.  Some structural elements appear downstage, but all other architectural elements were cleverly painted on flats and drops.

      

Later in the eighteenth century mood began to be painted on settings. Italian Gian Battista Piranesi engraved Roman ruins in a 

rather realistic fashion using chiaroscuro, starkly contrasting portions of the ruins in sunlight with those in shade.  He also made good use of this technique in a series of imagined prisons (prigiones). Piranesi used the same conventions in his engravings as in angled scenery, and soon scene designers began to use Piranesi’s marked contrasts of light and shadow in their settings. So by the end of the century, especially in the opera, you could to an extent set mood for dramatic effect by exploiting chiaroscuro.

Goldoni’s realistic comedies required domestic and often rural settings, and in this way local color and more realistic touches began to creep into Italian scene design, as it had through the rest of Europe...to which we now turn!

Note: Doctor Jack is placing a slide show of eighteenth century theatres in the blog, in the area below the main post, as he has taken many photos of theatres from that era, particularly in Italy, and he'd like to share them with his readers. Enjoy!

Theatre in Eighteenth Century France II: Theatre Spaces, Staging, Design, Acting

A revolution of sorts went on in the practical side of theatre as well in eighteenth century France, in theatre architecture, staging, design and acting.

In 1700 there were only two “legitimate” or licensed theatres in Paris (similar to the situation in London); the Opéra, which had a monopoly on sung drama, and the Comédie Française, which had a monopoly on spoken drama in French.  But they weren’t the only places in Paris where one could see theatre.  Fairs in and around

the city nearly always featured short commedia style pieces mixed with other variety entertainments.  There was also a place called the Opéra Comique, where unique entertainments were performed. No dialogue could be sung, for that would be recitative, which was reserved for grand opera; and no dialogue could be spoken in French, because that could only happen at the Comédie Française. So the inventive artists of the Opéra Comique sang arias, and to keep the story line going, printed rhymed explanatory couplets on placards.  Boys dressed as cupids held them, and these boys were flown in and suspended above the action on stage – one way to get around licenses and patents and such!

      

In 1716 an Italian troupe of actors was invited back to Paris. You may remember that such a troupe had played Paris regularly in the

This is not the original location, but there is still
a Comédie Italienne in Paris

17^th century until Louis XIV decided he didn’t want them in France any more.  They performed plays in Italian, obviously, until after 1721, when they also began performing some plays in French, including pieces by Marivaux.  Just as in England, then, although “legitimate” theatres supposedly had a monopoly on drama, other theatrical activity found ways to be presented, and to expand the world of theatre.

      

eighteenth century French theatres looked very similar to eighteenth century English theatres.  Both used the pit, box and gallery system for audiences.  On stage, as the century progressed, the French pushed back their forestage as the English had, centering most of the action within the scenic stage.  Cutting back the forestage made more room for audience seating, and more room was needed.  In France as in England, theatre auditoriums grew ludicrously larger in the eighteenth century. 

You might say it grew a little from the tiny one depicted in the image of the space in 1726!

The French removed spectators from their pretentious onstage seats in 1759.  In fact, as I noted in an earlier lecture, David Garrick got the idea to remove fops from the sides of the English

stage when he was on a trip to France in the 1760s.  However,

whereas the British had placed benches in the pit as early as the 1660s, the French kept its parterre flat and “standing-room-only” until 1782.  But it seems a standing parterre was more active than a seated parterre, and forces were at work to silence the noise and audience participation from the standees in the pit. The first step was to post guards in the parterre in order to keep the audience quiet and calm.  While some rejoiced at this, listen to what Diderot had to say:

“Fifteen years ago our theatres were tumultuous places.  The coldest heads became heated on entering and sensible men more or less shared the transports of madmen.  There was movement, bustle, and pushing; the soul was beside itself.  I know of no frame of mind more favorable to the poet…when a fine passage arrived there was an incredible din…The infatuation swept from the pit to the amphitheatre, and from the amphitheatre to the boxes. People…went away in a state of drunkenness.  Some went to brothels, others went into polite society.  That is enjoyment!  Today, they arrive coldly, they listen coldly, they leave coldly...”

At any rate, the re-furbished Comédie Française opened with benches in the parterre in 1782.  But the playwright Mercier echoed Diderot: 

“No sooner was the audience made to sit down during performances, than it fell into a lethargy…the electric contact between stage and pit has been broken...”

These anecdotes have something to say about the participatory nature of the theatre, about the communication between actor and audience, and that to some authority figures, such participation and communication might be considered dangerous.

      

In the French theatres the auditoriums moved from rectangular boxes into curved “horseshoe” shaped spaces.  (See the image above of the Comédie Française in the late eighteenth century above.) This rounding out helped sightlines, and also increased numbers of available seats. Behind the proscenium arch, theatres 

in the early years of the century were small, relatively uncomplicated spaces.  The old Hôtel de Bourgogne had been using the same scenic techniques for nearly a century.  Neoclassical plays needed only one set, as they were bound by unity of place. However, the move throughout the century was towards more complicated settings and changes of scene, especially for plays written in the mode of specific and exotic locales, such as the tragedies popularized by Voltaire.  A new kind of setting, angled scenery, was introduced in Paris by a designer brought in from Italy named Servandoni (1695-1766). We’ll define angled scenery (scena per angolo) when we get to Italy, but for now let’s say that the popularity of the new form quickly made Servandoni the hottest designer in eighteenth century France.

Lighting was very similar to that described in the earlier lecture on eighteenth century England. Much more money began to be spent on candles and oil lamps, and of course wicks had to be trimmed for safety and to ensure that candles would not go out mid-performance. Thus the image above of a masked candle snuffer during performance. One of the primary reasons for intermissions was so that chandeliers could be lowered so that candles in them could be worked on. Even so, hot wax dripping on audience members, particularly those in the parterre, was not uncommon. And of course all this open flame resulted in disastrous fires.

Costumes were dealt with much as they were in England:  contemporary clothing for most plays, and habit à la Romaine remained the style in plays with classical subjects. Some attempt was made to create “oriental” costumes to match the new, exotic

settings, though one historian has claimed that the clothing for Voltaire’s play The Orphan of China looked more Turkish than Chinese.  The stars, of course, wore pretty much what they wanted, no matter where or when the play was set.  At about mid-century, Mlle Clairon got rid of the hoops (panieres) that were the height of fashion, and also argued against wearing the outrageous piles of hair on stage, particularly in classical roles.  In addition, she stopped using the white, mask-like make-up that had been popular on the stage, in favor of a more “natural” look.

Now to performance. As in England, French acting featured a mixture of styles, from bombast to “natural,” very like the contrast between Quin and Garrick.  But, again, don’t confuse “natural” with Stanislavskian realism.

Interestingly, one of the oldest actors was responsible for the more “natural” style in France.  Michel Baron, who’d been the greatest tragic actor in France towards the end of the seventeenth century, came out of retirement from 1720-1729.  Baron, now in his 70s, was able to influence some young French players towards a more “realistic” style than was usual on eighteenth century French stages.

      

One of Baron’s finest pupils was the lovely, frail and doomed Adrienne LeCouvreur (1692-1730). While her personal life was controversial, she was tremendously popular in the tragedies of

Racine and Corneille as well as serious contemporary plays, LeCouvreur died suddenly and under mysterious circumstances (possibly having been poisoned) in Voltaire’s arms.  The church refused her burial on sanctified ground, as it had with Molière. When they wanted to, clergy could still call on ancient church law that excommunicated actors, and did on occasion.  Voltaire lashed out in print against the hypocrisy of the Church in general and its prejudice against actors specifically after Adrienne LeCouvreur died.  It was not until the end of the century that actors gained equal rights.  The French Revolution saw to that!

      

Later in the century, Mlle Dumesnil (1713-1803) and Mlle Clairon (1723-1803), considered the finest actresses, were also 

great rivals. Clairon was admitted to the Comédie Française in 1743 as the understudy to Dumesnil, who was considered at that time THE great tragedienne. But Clairon soon became Dumesnil’s rival in fame.  A great argument ensued over whose style was better, and some of the great writers of the day took sides. The basic difference was that Dumesnil was uneven on stage, but that she offered audiences flashes of astonishing brilliance.  A writer took note of a particularly inspired moment one evening, when, while playing Cleopatra, Dumesnil offered the audience

“a more than usual degree of that fiery energy for which she was so distinguished...the persons who occupied the front rows of the pit, instinctively drew back, shrinking, as it were, from her terrific [gaze]!” 

Clairon on the other hand was much more consistent, uniformly fine in her work, though she never quite reached Dumesnil’s inspired flashes.  Steady technique versus inspired flashes? Probably best to have a mix of both.  Ultimately, the verdict of the writers was that Clairon was superior (Diderot, Voltaire and even David Garrick on his trip to France thought so); but their votes did not stop Dumesnil from having a fine career.  Clairon, as I’ve noted, was an early advocate for more accuracy in costuming. 

Clairon’s frequent leading man was Lekain (1729-1778). He

served a long apprenticeship in the theatre, but gradually came to be considered the greatest tragic actor of his age.  Lekain strove for greater realism in his acting.  Voltaire claimed that Lekain’s performances were responsible for the success of that writer’s tragedies, more Voltaire’s writing of them. 

At the very end of the century, one of the finest actors was 

Francois-Joseph Talma (1763-1826).  His career mirrored the 

strange twists and turns that France took moving into and out of 

the Revolution.  Shortly before the Revolution, Talma shocked audiences by playing a small role in Voltaire’s Brutus not in habit a la Romaine (which the rest of the actors were wearing), but in an authentic looking toga (heaven forbid!).  During the Revolution, Talma left the Comédie Française with other dissident actors to perform a more revolutionary kind of theatre.  Ironically, one of Talma’s biggest fans was Napoleon, and the actor became one of the emperor’s greatest admirers.  Talma managed to survive from the ancien regime, thru the Revolution, to the authoritarian regime of Napoleon. By bridging all these political changes, Talma was also able to bridge the move from Neoclassical acting into a new style, that would come to be called Romantic. More of that movement soon. 

Wearing emotion on your sleeve, or face...eighteenth century acting!

Next time, theatre in eighteenth century Italy!

Eighteenth Century French Theatre I: Background and Playwrights

In the eighteenth century, Paris reigned as the major cultural center of Europe.  Louis XIV continued his lengthy reign, and was succeeded by the powerful Louis XV, who continued in the style of his father - the pursuit of happiness. It was quite possible, if you

Mme de Pompadour was one of Louis XV's
favorite mistresses. Could she act? Didn't matter!
 "It's very good to be the king!"

 were among the nobility or some of the clergy, and as usual it was very good to be the king! But not so great to be a peasant. One of Louis XV's several mistresses, Mme de Pompadour, was occasionally drawn to the stage.  When Louis XV died his grandson became Louis VXI.

Unlike his predecessors, Louis XVI was reluctant ruler.  He was married to Marie Antoinette, an Austrian princess from the 

Louis XVI

powerful Hapsburg family. Great minds of the age in France began to criticize the oppression by the aristocracy and the Church against the average person.  Thinkers and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and Diderot began to advocate for social and political change. Similar sentiments could be found in 
England and the rest of Europe as well, but in France, growing assertions of the rights and duties of humans led to the storming of 

Marie Antoinette

the Bastille in 1789, and blood ran through the cobblestone streets of Paris. Revolutionaries guillotined the French king and his wife, along with countless others, during what was called a reign of terror in the French Revolution. Thanks to that catastrophic conflict, the social order changed drastically in eighteenth century France, from aristocratic control to middle class control. And the effects of the Revolution were felt throughout Europe.

The death of Marie Antoinette - the executioner is holding her head up for the
people to see

French drama in the eighteenth century was not as revolutionary as French politics, nor as brilliant as that of the seventeenth century masters Molière, Racine and Corneille. In the realm of tragedy the most important name is Voltaire (1694-1778), one of the greatest minds of the eighteenth century. Voltaire is remembered for his

short novel Candide and for his philosophical works much more than for his plays, but Voltaire was attracted to the theatre as well and wrote over 50 plays.  His first was Oedipe (1718) an obvious imitation of Racine’s tragedy.  In his later works, however, Voltaire attempted to extend the subject matter of the tragic form by setting his plays in exotic locales. He wrote Alzire, for example, set in Peru, and set other plays in a harem in Jerusalem and in the Middle East. In l'Orphelin de la Chine he took the French all the way to China! The use of exotic places reflects 

eighteenth century Europe’s desire to search out (and colonize) other parts of the world, but it also has vital practical importance for the theatre.  Setting a play in Peru meant that Peru needed to be depicted on the stage.  As in England, local color became very important in French dramas, and increasingly important scenic artists painted specific, exotic settings.  The shift in locale also helped to freshen the subject matter of plays, moving it away from the nearly exhausted variations on the Greek and Roman classical themes, and they also begin to set the stage for the Romantic movement in drama. So! Voltaire is important for these innovations, but his tragedies are produced only occasionally on French stages today.
   

More popular were tales of middle class characters and values, a sentimental drama as we’ve already seen in England.  In the area of comedy, the “Honest Dick” Steele of France was Pierre Claude Nivelle de la Chaussée (1692-1754), who established the comédie larmoyante or “tearful comedy” on the stages of Paris.  As in Steele’s work, La Chaussée’s plays feature virtuous protagonists who are beset by obstacles but who overcome them and are made happy in the end. Indicative titles from La Chaussée’s plays include False Antipathy, Fashionable Prejudice, and The Man of Fortune.

      

A more sophisticated writer of this new tearful comedy was Pierre Carlet de Chamblain de Marivaux (1688-1763).  His style is 

marked by gentility and subtlety, suggesting a polished, refined version of commedia dell’arte, and in fact Marivaux’s plays 
usually premiered at the Comédie Italienne. In the plays, Marivaux
concentrated on the pychological joys,
tortures and fears

that first love can provoke.  Marivaux frequently featured Arlecchino in his comedies, and transformed the rough, saucy serving maid of the commedia into the pert and delicate Columbine.  One of Marivaux’s finest pieces is The Game of Love and Chance (1730), another The Triumph of Love (1732), both of which have seen frequent revivals and adaptations in the late twentieth century.

In The Game of Love and Chance, two upper class lovers change places with their servants. Why?  There is talk of an arranged marriage. Neither Silvia, the young woman, nor Dorante, the young man, has seen the other, and both want to find out what the 

other looks like and acts like.  So, Silvia instructs her servant Lisette to pretend to be her, and Dorante instructs his servant Harlequin to pretend to be him.  As you might guess, Silvia, in observing Dorante-Harlequin finds herself disgusted by his behavior, and is disturbed to find herself falling in love with his servant (Harlequin-Dorante).  And Dorante discovers he’s not nearly as interested in Sylvia-Lisette as he seems to be in her servant (Lisette-Sylvia)!  After tortuous and heartbreaking twistings and turnings and discoveries, Dorante and Sylvia find that each has been playing the same game, and are married. Harlequin and Lisette have in the meantime become attracted as well! 

      

In the serious drama, a new form created in France equates roughly to English Domestic tragedy, which was epitomized by George Lillo’s The London Merchant.  Denis Diderot (1713-1784),

another great mind of the eighteenth century, created this form and called it le drame or le drame seriouse).   Diderot argued that, while classical subjects had their merits, they no longer spoke to the average citizen of France.  He called for a new form, “a serious play, whose office it is to depict the virtue and duties of man.”  In order to illustrate his concept, Diderot wrote two plays: The Natural Son; or, The Trials of Virtue (published 1757, produced 1771) and The Father of the Family.  A “natural” son by the way is not what you may think it means. It refers to an illegitimate son – a bastard. These plays are almost never produced today but they are historically significant because they formed an entirely new genre relevant to the age and to the people of that age. All this in rule-bound, Neoclassical France!

Diderot’s work is significant another level as well.  There were social and political reasons for this highly moral drama.  As I’ve noted, the social order was changing drastically in the eighteenth century, from aristocratic control to middle class control.  Sometimes the change was bloody, as was certainly the case in the American revolution against its mother country England, and even more certainly in France, where Diderot’s assertions of the rights and duties of humans led to the storming of the Bastille in 1789, and to heads lopped off by the new & “humane” Madamoiselle Guillotine!

      

Diderot was also important in other aspects of theatre.  He wrote a fascinating treatise on acting called The Paradox of the Actor.  He also is credited with some of the earliest moves towards stage realism.  He was perhaps the first person to use the term “fourth wall” in connection with the theatre. We think of this “wall” as the curtain on a proscenium arch stage, dividing the world of the play from the world of the audience. Diderot’s idea was that the fourth wall was the back of the auditorium. I prefer his notion, don’t you?

      

The greatest French playwright of the eighteenth century was Pierre August Caron (1732-1799), better known as Beaumarchais.  If anyone came close to inheriting Moliere’s mantle in French 

drama, it was Beaumarchais. He started by writing comedies in the sentimental, tearful form. Eugenie (1767) is an example. But his reputation rests on two laughing comedies, written in France at exactly the same time that Goldsmith and Sheridan were writing similar plays in England:  The Barber of Seville (1775) and The Marriage of Figaro (1784).  Both of these plays are better known in their operatized versions, Barber by Rossini, and Marriage by Mozart, but it’s worth running down the 

This is Rossini's opera, not the play

plots of these brilliantly structured and highly comic pieces.

   

In The Barber of Seville (1775) Old Bartolo wishes to marry his ward, Rosine, who for her part loves a gentleman, Lindoro, who is really the Count Almaviva in disguise.  Figaro, the barber of Seville, comes to this couple’s rescue, by intriguing to get Almaviva into Bartolo’s house.  Figaro succeeds, Bartolo is outwitted, the Count and Rosine marry, and Figaro is made the Count’s valet.  Voila!

In The Marriage of Figaro, written in 1784, the curtain goes up on the Count and Rosine several years after their marriage, when the count has lost interest in his wife.  He transfers his attentions to Suzanne, Figaro’s fiancée.  In fact, Almaviva demands that he be 

allowed droit de seigneur, an odious practice: when a couple in the aristocrat’s service marries, the aristocrat, by his right as their lord, gets first shot at the woman in bed.  Figaro manages to foil him in this attempt, but the Count next tries to marry Figaro off to the elderly Marceline, until it’s discovered to everyone’s surprise that Marceline is Figaro’s mother!  To make things even more complicated, Rosine, the neglected countess, persuades Suzanne to agree to meet the Count for an assignation in a dark place, but the countess will replace Suzanne in the dark and thus trick her husband into sleeping with her again. In the very clever last scene, the count is caught in his machinations, gains a new respect for his wife, and Figaro is now free to marry his Suzanne!

The humor of these plays is tempered by Figaro’s position as an honest sturdy Frenchman.  Audiences not only laughed with him, but felt with and for him too.  Figaro is a man of the people. His jokes about the aristocracy in Barber of Seville carried a revolutionary resonance.  The tone grows darker in the Marriage of Figaro, when Figaro speaks of the worthlessness of the aristocracy directly to his master: “What have you done to deserve such advantages? Put yourself to the trouble of being born—nothing more.” This honest, clever man of the people outmaneuvers the Count in the Marriage of Figaro, but only by the skin of his teeth.   It was said that at performances of that play the aristocracy, sitting in the boxes, giggled at the audacious but funny jokes, while the common people, sitting in the paradis, laughed ruefully. In a few years the Bastille would fall! Louis XVI wanted to ban the play, stating that “the Bastille would have to be torn down before such a play could be staged.” Oh, his prophetic soul! Ironically, Marie Antoinette insisted that the show go on – whoops! You might say she lost her head...
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