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Figaro - a New Man for a New Age
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| King Louis |
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The Character of Figaro was not invented by Rossini the composer but by a famous Frenchman named Beaumarchais. Beaumarchais lived in the 18th century, at a time when the governments of kings and queens were on a collision course with the tides of revolution. In France, King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette and their court of nobles and aristocrats behaved as though the common people simply did not count at all. Indeed, most of the common people at that time were desperately poor and powerless. Nevertheless, there was a small but growing middle class, particularly in the cities and towns, people who were resourceful and hard-working and full of ideas on how to make money -- and thus improved their lives, the kind of people who in America were beginning to talk of revolution.
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| Beaumarchais |
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Beaumarchais, although he had some ties with the nobility, was such a man. Both he and the barber Figaro, the character he invented, became important figures in the French and American revolutions. Prior to the 18th century, plays and operas were written almost entirely about gods and goddesses, kings and queens, princes and princesses, dukes and duchesses, and so forth. Even in a story like Cinderella, the poor sit-by-the-fire girl ends up as a princess because she is virtuous and patient and is eventually recognized as a better person than the pretentious and greedy people around her. Beaumarchais, on the other hand, set out to write a series of three plays about some wealthy people in which the action springs from a whole different kind of energy center -- a barber named Figaro who is far more clever, hard-working, interesting, and constructive than any of the many people he works for. This was a real revolution in the theatre, and had a profound effect on spreading the revolutionary ideas that were being discussed by educated people, in both France and America.
Beaumarchais himself, in fact, was so sympathetic to the American Revolution that he got the French king to send arms to the Americans by persuading him that it would be a splendid way of embarrassing England if the Americans actually won their revolution. Together with the American patriot, Silas Deane (from Groton, Connecticut), Beaumarchais managed to send a shipment of arms that reached the Hudson River Valley in time to turn the tide of Revolution at the famous battle of Saratoga in October 1777. The American victory so impressed the French king that France came out publicly in support of George Washington, and sent the French troops to America that helped win the war.
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| Washington Crossing the Delaware River |
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Beaumarchais was in constant trouble with the nobility, in and out of jail, in and out of bankruptcy, in and out of favor with those in power. His plays, while immensely popular, angered the royal censors; this is why he changed the time and place of the story to “Spain in the Olden Days.” But everyone knew that he was really talking about life in France in the 1770s, and the need for new ideas and a new approach to life.
Thus we can see how Beaumarchais might come to create a character such as Figaro. We can also see how Rossini, with a similar rather chaotic upbringing, would be attracted to Figaro, as well. By 1816, when the opera was actually written, Figaro the barber had done his work: the American Revolution (1776-1781) and the French Revolution (1789) were over. But the forces of tyranny were, and still are, at work; certain people are always eager to grab too much power for themselves. It is Figaro’s spirit that lives on, and eventually catches up with them, and tries to “set things right” in the end.
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