THE BARBER OF SEVILLE or THE USELESS PRECAUTION
Pierre Beaumarchais wrote a trilogy of plays featuring his own quick-witted, autobiographical alter-ego, Figaro: The Barber of Seville (1773), The Marriage of Figaro (1778), and The Guilty Mother (1792). This trio of radically funny and popular plays were also quite subversive, as they called for social equality in the tumultuous years leading up to the French Revolution, espoused feminism long before women had any demonstrable rights, skewered the foibles and excesses of the aristocracy, and most importantly, championed the intelligence of ordinary citizens. Remarkably hilarious and revolutionary at the same time, they were truly visionary pieces that still can pierce the bubble of our egotistical pride, and ring as true today as they did over 200 years ago.
Beaumarchais was a most interesting man. Watchmaker, musician, secret agent, businessman, diplomat, fugitive, and gunrunner for the American Revolution. He founded a shell corporation, Roderigue Hortalez & Company, to funnel Spanish and French arms and supplies into Portsmouth, New Hampshire, via the West Indies, in exchange for tobacco. At 21, he invented a new form of watch escapement, which was pirated by the royal watchmaker, Jean-André Lepaute, causing a protracted legal battle over the patent. Beaumarchais’s quips in the court of the Académie des Sciences became popular lore, and he eventually won his case. He then designed a bejeweled “keyless watch” on a ring, no bigger than the size of a quarter, for the royal mistress, Madame de Pompadour. Louis XV was so impressed that he ordered another for himself, fired Lepaute, and appointed Pierre as the royal watchmaker. Beaumarchais’s next assignment was to teach harp lessons to the King’s four daughters (just imagine the din in that music room!) By 30 he had purchased a noble office, renamed himself Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, and fully entered high society.
Paisiello wrote the first operatic version of Barber in 1780, and Rossini followed suit in 1816. Mozart would write his famous opera to the sequel in 1786, only two years after Louis XVI allowed Beaumarchais’s The Marriage of Figaro to be performed onstage. It’s important to remember that these were contemporary works, aimed at satirizing the well-heeled audience watching from the comfort of their velvet seats. A sort of “White Lotus” long before its time.
We tend to regard these works as museum pieces now, with powdered wigs and harpsichords, which obfuscates the immediacy they once had when directly mocking their own audience. I wanted to toss in a few anachronistic reminders throughout the show to jolt the audience into realizing that that we are still the same vain, entitled, selfish beasts that Beaumarchais encountered. We too, need to have the mirror reflect our own faces, in hopes of a glimmer of self-reflection. And what better medium to convey this message than laughter? As Charles Ludlam, the great American founder of the Theatre of the Ridiculous, wrote: “You are a living mockery of your own ideals. If not, you have set your ideals too low.”
Enjoy tonight’s silly romp around Seville, and I hope it feels fresh and new, and yes, even a bit radical and challenging. For in today’s crazy world, where Truth can be so easily conflated with Opinion, where we are still banning books which may have revolutionary ideas embedded in them in order to “protect our children” -- it is always important to remember that the pen is mightier than the sword, and Freedom of Thought will eventually triumph. As Figaro says in the first play: “I’d say that the nonsense that finds its way into print only matters to the people who would like to ban it; that without the freedom to criticize, praise is meaningless.”
200 years later these Enlightenment plays and operas still pack a comic and critical punch, and their ideas still feel fresh and even challenging. Napoleon supposedly said that Beaumarchais should have been put in jail and kept there, as he was “the revolution already in action.” I cannot think of a more ringing endorsement, or a more useless precaution.