by Paul S. Foster

It’s not complicated at all. The story was concocted in French. It’s set in Spain. It’s sung in Italian. It’s composed by an Austrian. Its first success was in Czechoslovakia. The suspicious Emperor who OK'd it was Catholic. The composer was a Mason. The librettist was an Italian Jew. It has melted the hearts of the most privileged of men and women in $80 seats, and the most hardened murderers in lock-down when Tim Robbins played an aria over the PA system in Shawshank Prison before the warden busted in and broke the record and beat him unconscious.

It is, of course, the rarest jewel in the crown of civilization: Le Nozze di Figaro, The Marriage of Figaro, by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte. I should stop here? How do you appraise a flawless diamond?

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756 - 1791) as a boy

First, let’s get the bare bones of the plot out of the way. Figaro is the servant of the Count Almavira. Figaro wants to marry the Countess’s maid, Susanna. You see, no problem when servants want to get hitched. Alas, the Count also wants Susanna. He doesn’t want to wed her (Heavens, no! Wrong class.), but he does want to bed her. And by the old feudal "droit de seigneur," or the right of the lord to take the virginity on her wedding night of any pretty girl in his employ, he can do just that.

Ah, so the theme is, the snobbery of sex? Not exactly. Figaro sets his theme when he says of the Count, "If that is your dance, you will dance to my tune." He paraphrases Humpty-Dumpty who, years later when little Alice Liddel asks, " …whether you can make words mean so many different things," and he replies, "The question is which is to be master - that’s all."

Ah, so it’s about class struggle? No, Karl Marx, crawl back into your well-deserved grave. It is about cunning versus power. Figaro learns what the Count is up to , and he wants to protect his true love.

And yet, there is another theme, which takes the high ground and leaves the moral issues and the class struggle to sort themselves out. That theme is, "amor vincit omnes," love conquers all. Bam!! So take that Batman, Queen of Hearts, and Karl Marx.

These are themes that churn up an opportunity for two of the most sublime pieces of music, ever, ever. The Countess, sad because the happiness she once knew with the Count is now gone, sings "Dove sono i bei momenti?" ("Where have all my happiest moments gone?"), and Pamela Armstrong sings it to perfection, perfection.

The second is Susanna’s aria as she thinks about her future happiness when she is married to Figaro. It’s a lovely, subdued aria - perhaps the most sensual and stunning that Mozart ever wrote, I do believe. Certainly, Sari Gruber as Susanna sings a sublime soprano.

Although the Count is doing his "man thing" in a disgraceful way, John Hancock’s baritone is a manly piece of singing. And you find yourself praying with all your heart that he will not damage the love between Figaro and Susanna, which begat such music as this, and that it will end in happiness. Amor does indeed vincit all, doesn’t it? Well, isn’t it supposed to?

Humph, in your dreams. It may be too much to believe that Susanna’s dream will end so beautifully. Think of what an incorrigible cynic Beaumarchais was. After all, it was he who wrote the original play from which Lorenzo Da Ponte wrote the libretto on which Mozart hung his arias. Beaumarchais’ DNA is all over the piece, lurking, leering, lusting behind the curtains and the props.

Does love conquer all? Who cares? We love a Christmas tree for the bright ornaments and the lights. Well, don’t we? The tree itself is, just a naked necessity Its not even alive. Is it? It’s value is to support ornaments, in this case, the music. It’s about the music, stupendous!

No, no, no, pas du tout. Not so fast. What is so delusive, delightful, delicious about Figaro, is that everything is so artificial. It is a world standing outside nature, made entirely by artifice, in this case a world made by geniuses, in which nothing has the feeling of anything so crude as reality. It’s also about the story, stupendous. You can’t hang ornaments on the floor. (Really!) You need the tree, made of spun glass as it is. For instance:

Cherubino is a teenager, played and sung to a fair-thee-well by the lithe and supple Paula Rasmussen, who thinks (s)he is in love with the Countess, easily twenty years older that (s)he. The Count is on to the antics of the perpetually priapic pubescent who is trying to hide behind a chair in plain sight so that even a blind mole can see h(im)er. See, Cherubino is a boy, played by a girl, making love to a woman who thinks he is a boy (or pretends to think so, hmm) when her husband enters to almost catch them at it, but Cherubino "hides" in such a spot that the Count would have to be certifiably blind not to see him.

But wait, there’s more. Later, this boy, who is played by a girl, is asked to dress as a girl to seduce the Count who definitely is not attracted to boys, but might, just might, be attracted to girls who dress as boys pretending to be girls. It was the coffee. They made it very strong in Vienna in the Eighteenth Century.

And so, artifice for all. The moment that you get out of the taxi at Lincoln Center you are drawn to the fountain lit under water to make candy-pink and Lalique-white bubbles (When did you ever, ever see water this color? Never.). The Newhouse Theater, the City Opera, the Metropolitan Opera, the Philharmonic Hall are like great ocean liners tied up to dock at a Technicolor little pish of water, bubbling insanely away, never doubting that it can float these behemoths. It’s the little fountain that could.

The artifice continues as you step onto the red carpet floors in the first ring, and the red carpeted doors close softly behind you. The walls have red rugs, the floor has red rugs, the doors have red rugs. Is this precaution? Do opera-goers, in their enthusiasm, actually hurt themselves? Did the designers really need to put the audience in a padded room? Yes, no, sometimes, maybe, I don’t know. But when those scarlet carpet doors close behind you, no sound from inside or outside can pass through. Reality is sealed out. You are sealed in by big-shouldered usherettes in starched, starched white blouses.

Aida got this treatment for sexual misconduct, and I paid eighty bucks for it.

The overture begins right away. It is lively, witty. You would have to be carved of something Gorishly stolid not to sense intrigue and quick wit, a breathless statement that does not, unlike most overtures, quote any music from the opera which that is to follow. But one thing is sure, you know that you are in the hands of a dangerous genius who takes so many chances that you tingle with anticipation. The curtain rises, and what a joy, what a transporting joy! Well, you get pretty hoarse cheering someone for 200 years.

And speaking of the 200-year interval, I suppose it’s P.C. to compare the Mozart / Da Ponte engine of "love conquers all" to today’s reality, to today’s political correctness, to today’s brain garbage, to today’s…zzzzz.

The Count would be hauled into court for sexual harassment in the workplace. A glass ceiling stopped Susanna from setting her goals higher than marriage to a lackey of this aristocratic exploiter of women, and she would seek damages big enough to bankrupt the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The Countess is a fool to still love the Count, after his many sinfidelities, and now nobody in Bridgehampton will talk to her. Cherubino must be sent home from school and brain-whipped so that he will never again kiss little girls from kindergarten on up. Or worse still, he’s banned from the Village -Halloween Parade until he gets his sexual orientation straightened out once and for all. And, alas, our hero, Figaro, would be charged with arborcide for fibbing about who jumped out the garden window and smashed the begonias. But were I the judge, I’d let Dean Ely, a.k.a. Figaro, off with just community service for having sung his famous aria, "Non piu andrai" ("The Coldstream Guards March"), so masterfully. You can always plant more begonias.

Perhaps it’s for these reasons that the doors are padded in scarlet carpet, a padded barricade to keep at bay the braying hounds of the enlightened, neurotic, victim-cult of the Twentieth and 21st Centuries, lest we destroy the fragile artifice which this dead, white male genius has constructed so astonishingly well.

So remember, when the polls open on November seventh, everyone rush out and vote for Mozart. Hah! We should be so lucky to have such a choice instead of these two dunderheads.

About the Author:

Paul Foster, co-founder of La Mama Theater, is an award-winning author of eighteen Broadway and Off-Broadway plays. His work has been seen in numerous television and film scripts and he has fourteen books published in several languages. Foster has won NEA, NEH, Rockefeller, Guggenheim, British Arts Council and Irish Universities Fellowships and Awards. The Paul Foster Theatrical Collection can be found at Rutgers University, Alexander Library, New Brunswick, NJ.

Resources:

Foster reviewed the performance of 16 September 2000 at the New York City Opera, Lincoln Center, New York. The City Opera's entire 2000 - 2001 season is available at http://www.nycopera.com/nycosea00 01.htm