THE BEAUMARCHAIS PLAYS

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
When Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette became King and Queen of France in 1774, France was still largely a feudal society. Over ninety percent of the population was rural and, while the institution was dying, many were still serfs or, at best, sharecroppers. Those who did own land had small, economically uneconomic holdings. At the same time, the peasants were subject to an overwhelming burden of taxes. Most workers in the cities also lived in poverty. There were sporadic riots throughout France.

1775 saw a landmark in French theatre, the premiere of Beaumarchais's Le Barbier de Séville and when, in 1783 the Peace of Versailles, ending the American Revolution, an example had been set by the colonists' revolt. By 1784 Le Mariage de Figaro expressed the feeling of many, including the middle classes who wished to have more control of the French government. The crowns of Europe sat uneasily on the heads of those who wore them. The French Revolution started in 1789 and in 1791 Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette were arrested. They were executed in 1793.

BEAUMARCHAIS'S TRILOGY
The story and characters were not original with Beaumarchais. The story goes back at least to Molière if not before. In L'École des femmes (The School for Wives), Molière tells the story of an old man who determines to marry his ward but its outwitted by the girl and a young man with whom she is in love. There is even the planned escape down a ladder. Figaro is the lineal descendant of the many scoundrelly valets in commedia dell'arte and in Italian and French dramas. However, he has more depth, we know something of his past life, and he grows and develops throughout the three stories.

Le Barbier de Séville started as a play with music. Some of the songs were written to popular tunes and others were written by Beaumarchais himself. It was written in free moments of the author's busy life and production was delayed several times, sometimes because the author was in prison or in other difficulties. The Comédie-Italienne refused this work, and he rewrote it as a play for the Comédie-Française. While basically a comedy, there is much social commentary, much of it lost on modern audiences; his contemporaries recognized Figaro as Beaumarchais himself. The play was finally staged in the same year the author started his activities in behalf of the American colonies. Originally titled La Precaution inutile ou Le Barbier de Séville, the first performance, like that of Rossini's later opera, was a fiasco, but rewritten, it became a great success, even among the nobility. The last performance before the French Revolution was in the Petit Trianon at the Palace of Versaille.

If Le Barbier de Séville was a comedy with social undertones, it sequel, La Folle journée ou Le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day or the Marriage of Figaro) was an outright attack on the social structure of France. Napoleon called it "la revolution déju en marche (the revolution in action). When he first heard it, Louis XVI forbade its staging, but Beaumarchais read it several times in private homes, word of it spread, and after some editing it was allowed a public performance. In a soliloquy, Figaro addressed the nobles of Spain thusly: "What have you done for so much good fortune? You gave yourselves the trouble to be born, and nothing more; for the rest you are sufficiently ordinary! While I, lost in the common, have had to use more science and calculation merely to subsist than have gone into governing all Spain these hundred years past". While many of the élite in the boxes were shocked, the common people standing below were enthusiastic. The play ran for sixty-eight consecutive performance and was the greatest success of the century. Beaumarchais gave his share of the profits to charity. Surprisingly, Marie Antoinette loved the play and, sometimes took the role of Suzanne in private performances.

Unlike the carefree Figaro of the opera, the valet in Marriage is a cynical philosopher, the embodiment of the Enlightenment. Gudin, the author's biographer said, "In this play the [audience] applauded not only scenes of pure comedy but also the courageous man who dared to comment on, and to ridicule, the libertinage of great nobles, the ignorance of magistrates, the venalities of officials, and the false pleading of lawyers". It is no wonder that the Emperor Joseph II banned performance of the play in Vienna, and it had to be softened considerably before it could be used as a basis for the Mozart opera.

The third play of Beaumarchais's trilogy, La Mère coupable (The Guilty Wife) takes place twenty years later and is the story of the love between an illegitimate daughter of the Count and the illegitimate son of Rosine and the page Chérubin!

Return to The Barber of Seville Home Page

Revised July 2010
Please credit Lyric Opera San Diego when using this material.