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WHO WAS FIGARO ?
Figaro was the fictional, symbolic hero of a trilogy of plays by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais. He captured the world’s imagination, to the point where “figaro” appears in dictionaries today meaning “barber.”
Beaumarchais’s plays:
The Barber of Seville, or All That Trouble For Nothing, 1775
The Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro, 1784
The New Tartuffe, or The Guilty Mother, 1792
 Figaro, Count Almaviva, and Rosina are in all three plays. The characters grow older between the plays—a literary first. Figaro helps the Count court Rosina in Barber. Three years later, the Count is bored in Figaro. In The Guilty Mother, the Countess has had an illegitimate son by Cherubino, Cherubino has been killed in a far-off land, and the Count forgives the Countess just as she forgave him in Figaro. The Marriage of Figaro was the longest stage comedy of the eighteenth century.
Figaro operas:
The playwright intended the first two scripts to be recast as operas. Mozart and Da Ponte set The Marriage of Figaro in 1785-6. Giovanni Paisiello and Giovanni Petrosellini set The Barber of Seville in 1782, premiering in St. Petersburg. Gioachino Rossini and Cesare Sterbini’s much more famous The Barber of Seville opened in Rome in 1816. Darius Milhaud and Madeleine Milhaud (Darius Milhaud’s wife and cousin) set La mère coupable, premiering in Geneva in 1966. American composer and librettist John Corigliano and William M. Hoffman’s The Ghosts of Versailles (Metropolitan Opera, 1991) includes the characters of Figaro, Beaumarchais, and Marie Antoinette.
FIGARO QUOTES
Beaumarchais invented the name “Figaro,” possibly a version of his own name, fils Caron. “Fils,” meaning “son,” was pronounced “fi” in eighteenth-century French, so “fils Caron” would sound almost like “Figaro.”
Le Figaro is a major newspaper in France. It’s named for the barber/servant in Beaumarchais’s play, and it was founded in 1826 as a satirical weekly. By 1866 it was France’s biggest daily. Now it’s conservative, and powerful in other media, including the leading French Internet site for executive job placements. It keeps its motto, which was one of Figaro’s lines: "Sans la liberté de blâmer, il n'est point d'éloge flatteur”—without the freedom to blame, it’s pointless to flatter. Le Figaro online in English: http://www.lefigaro.fr/english/
 Così fan tutte: “That’s what all women do.” Basilio says it in Act I of The Marriage of Figaro, the opera, as Susanna panics when the count uncovers Cherubino. His line is “Così fan tutte le belle; non c'è alcuna novità!”: “Thus do all the pretty ones; there’s nothing new there.” He’s talking about Susanna, because he thinks he’s caught her misbehaving with Cherubino. Mozart and Da Ponte went on to write an entire opera called Così fan tutte four years after Figaro, in 1790.
FIGARO AND POLITICS
Beaumarchais’s play was banned in Vienna because the concept of smart, empowered servants outwitting masters was too dangerous. Beaumarchais was a supporter of the French and American Revolutions. Also revolutionary: in The Marriage of Figaro, the women conspire and outwit the men.
Mozart’s opera to Da Ponte’s libretto is less political: the characters are human individuals, not the symbolic, allegorical portrayals in Beaumarchais.
FIGARO AND FAME
The Marriage of Figaro is sixth on OPERA America’s “Cornerstones” list of the twenty most-performed operas in the U.S. Above it are Madama Butterfly, La bohème, La traviata, Carmen, and The Barber of Seville. Immediately below it are Don Giovanni, Tosca, Rigoletto, and The Magic Flute. http://www.operaamerica.org/audiences/learningcenter/cornerstones/index.shtml
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