Le Mariage de Figaro

On the morning of their wedding, Figaro is measuring the floor of the room His Lordship is giving them, Suzanne is adjusting her little hat of orange blossoms, and all seems for the best at the castle of Aguas-Frescas—until Suzanne, between two mocking curtsies, drops the word that upends it all: Count Almaviva, weary of courting the local beauties, has set his sights on her. This generous dowry, this convenient lodging between the two apartments, this post as a courier in London—all of it is merely the price with which he intends to buy a certain quarter of an hour, alone with her, that an ancient droit du seigneur—abolished by his own hand on his wedding day—would allow him to secretly reclaim.

Figaro rubs his head, his mind grows fertile, and he is launched into the maddest day of his life. He must bring forward the hour of the celebration to secure his marriage, pocket the gold and the gifts, fend off Marceline who is hounding him with an old marriage contract, throw the Count off the scent, and thrash Basile, the music master acting as a go-between—and all this before nightfall. But the castle is swarming with obstacles. Marceline, flanked by Doctor Bartholo, who still harbors a grudge for having Rosine snatched from him, arrives to demand justice: Figaro owes her two thousand piastres, and if he fails to pay, he must marry her. The Count, only too happy to have this weapon, convenes a tribunal.

Meanwhile, Chérubin, a thirteen-year-old page whose heart flutters at the mere sight of a woman—any woman: the Countess, Suzanne, Fanchette, even Marceline—throws himself at everyone's skirts. Caught in the gardener's daughter's room, banished by the Count, pardoned by the Countess, his godmother, and appointed as an officer in Catalonia to keep him away, he does not leave: Figaro has sneaked him back through the rear doors and plans to disguise him as Suzanne to trap the Count at their evening rendezvous. They style his hair and dress him in the Countess's chamber; he sings his melancholy romance to his deeply moved godmother—and just then, the Count knocks at the door.

What follows is a whirlwind of locked doors, suspicious closets, and windows opening onto the melon patches. The Count demands entry, the Countess pales, Chérubin leaps from the window in a crash of crushed wallflowers, and Suzanne takes his place in the closet, stepping out with a laugh just as the Count, crowbar in hand, prepares to break down the door. Confounded and pleading, he obtains a pardon he scarcely deserves—but the arrival of Antonio the gardener, half-drunk, brandishing a ruined flowerpot and swearing he saw a man fall, sets the machine in motion once again. Figaro takes the blame for the jump, feigns a sprained ankle, and narrowly evades disaster when Antonio produces a scrap of paper that fell from the jumper's jacket: Chérubin's officer's commission, lacking the Count's seal. Suzanne whispers the answer, the Countess prompts him, Figaro improvises—and Marceline arrives with her lawsuit.

The hearing is a marvel of chicanery. Judge Brid'oison stammers over procedural forms, Double-Main the clerk plays both sides, Bartholo pleads for the copulative conjunction and, Figaro for the alternative conjunction or, and everyone tears each other apart over an inkblot. The Count issues a decree condemning Figaro to either pay or marry Marceline—and it is then that Marceline, catching sight of a spatula tattooed on Figaro's right arm, lets out a cry: it is Emmanuel, her son, abducted long ago by gypsies. Bartholo is his father. Figaro falls into his mother's arms; Suzanne rushes in with the Countess's dowry, slaps Figaro, whom she believes unfaithful, understands the situation, embraces everyone, and Bartholo, coaxed by his two children, finally consents to marry Marceline.

But the Count has not laid down his arms. Suzanne, upon the Countess's orders, arranges to meet him in the garden that very evening, beneath the chestnut trees—except it is the Countess herself who will go, dressed in her maid's garments, without breathing a word to Figaro. The wedding takes place, the virginal headdress is pinned, the songs are sung, and night falls over the park. Figaro, tipped off by a misunderstood note, believes Suzanne unfaithful and comes to roar his famous monologue beneath the chestnut trees—a long outpouring of wrath and memory in which he reviews his entire picaresque life, his lost trades, his hissed plays, his times in prison, and hurls at the absent Count that burning question: what has he done to earn so many blessings, other than taking the trouble to be born?

Beneath the great trees, in the darkness where no one recognizes anyone, misunderstandings pile up like layers of comedy. The Count courts his own wife, believing he is seducing Suzanne; Figaro recognizes his betrothed by a well-placed slap; Chérubin kisses the Count, thinking he is kissing Fanchette; and the Count, furious to see his steward wooing the woman he takes to be the Countess, rouses the whole house. Torches are brought, masks fall, and the Countess reveals herself. The Count, on his knees, begs for a pardon she grants without illusion—for this is how it always ends, for one must eventually, with them, come to this. The violins resume, the verses burst forth, and the madcap day concludes as it began, in a whirlwind of music and laughter where everyone returns to their proper place—except that henceforth, nothing is ever quite in the same place as before.