The Marriage of Figaro

pierre de beaumarchais joan holden

Writing a few years before the French Revolution, barely concealing himself in his hero, Beaumarchais pours his class rage into a stock-comic vessel that barely contains it under pressure. Three years after the happy ending of, it s the valet s turn to marry. But his master the Count has tired of his lovely Countess, and lusts for Figaro s bride-to-be, Suzanne. He determines to revive the ancient the lord of the manor s right to bed her. Figaro and the women concoct a counter-plot; the Count s page, Cherubin (Mozart s Cerubino) makes hash of it through his passionate crush on the Countess. The double/triple/quadruple misunderstanding yields one of the most perfect farce scenes of all time, featuring a chair and a closet, and one of the finest master-servant scenes, featuring a razor. The play, as great in its kind as the opera Mozart made from it, proclaims Figaro a better man than the Count and the women better humans than the men. This version restores two revolutionary passages that the author cut to save his liberty: a confrontation between the Count and his vassals in the final scene that anticipates the guillotine, and a searing indictment of sexual inequality by Figaro s mother, Marceline.

Genres classicsplaysfrancefictionfrench literatureschooldramatheatre18th centuryread for school

72 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1778

Series

Figaro Trilogy

Places

seville, spain, andalusia,

This edition

Format: 72 pages, Paperback
Published: January 1, 2006 by Dramatists Play Service, Inc.
ISBN: 9780822221333
ASIN: 0822221330
Language: English

About the author

pierre de beaumarchais

Le Barbier de Séville (1775) and Le Mariage de Figaro (1784), the comic plays, best-known works of French writer Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, inspired Gioacchino Antonio Rossini and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart to operas.

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, a musician, diplomat, horticulturalist, satirist, and American revolutionary, made watches, invented, inventor, fled, spied, published, dealt arms, and financed.

Born a son to a provincial watchmaker , Beaumarchais rose in society as an influential inventor and music teacher in the court of Louis XV. He made a number of important business and social contacts in various roles as a diplomat and spy,and earned a considerable fortune before a series of costly court battles jeopardized his reputation.

An early supporter of American independence, Beaumarchais lobbied the government on behalf of the rebels during the war of independence. From the Spanish government, Beaumarchais oversaw covert aid to supply arms and financial assistance to the rebels in the years before formal entry of into the war in 1778. He personally invested money in the scheme but later struggled to recover it . Beaumarchais also participated in the early stages of the revolution. People probably remember especially his three theatrical pieces.

Jean-Pierre de Beaumarchais, a contemporary female, linearly descended.