Le Nozze Di Figaro Essay

After Idomeneo, Mozart composed a few more operas, but in 1786, the premiere of Le Nozze di Figaro set Mozart’s opera career on a new path. Le Nozze di Figaro is one of, if not the most famous opera buffa composed by Mozart. The Libretto was written by Lorenzo Da Ponte, and is the was first of the infamous Da Ponte operas, the others being Don Giovanni and Cosi fan tutte. The opera is set in 18th century Spain. This story takes place on the wedding day of Figaro and Susanna, Count Almaviva’s servants. Susanna admits to Figaro that she is being pursued by the count. This angers Figaro, who then vows to prevent the Count’s intentions. Figaro comes up with a plan: Susanna will write to the Count agreeing to a rendevous, but they will send the …show more content…
The Count realizes that his lover is his wife, and is very surprised. However, after seeing that he regrets what he had done, the Countess forgives her husband. The libretto, based on a play by Beaumarchais, poked fun at the dissoluteness of the upper class and the legal procedures at the time, but that is not what interested Mozart. Per the authors of The Great Operas of Mozart, “What attracted him, we must suppose, was the clever and comical convulsions of the complicated plot… and for the musical delineation of sharply differentiated characters who had achieved a freshness and humanity rare in opera librettos of the time.” Figaro differs from the rest of Italian operas during this time. It is a very long opera; Figaro consists of 4 acts, while the average opera buffa consisted of two to three acts. The length of Figaro is due to the enormous amount of drama that had to be squeezed in, and to the insistence of the singers of their rights to arias. This is obvious in the arias for Basilio and Marcellina in Act IV, for they contribute little to the drama of the story. Despite this, Figaro is generally agreed to be the most perfect and least problematic of Mozart’s great