Mozart's Marriage of Figaro
The BBC version in Covent Gardens’ Royal Opera House won't incite soccer riots, but it and Don Giovanni was worthy of a class war in the 1700s.
Today a Mozart opera seems hardly likely to cause public riots, but this perception of harmlessness wasn't always the case.
When the BBC tried to make England's World Cup games available on its public screen in Manchester's Exchange Square, unrest over the England/Paraguay match prompted the BBC to limit public access simply to ticket-holding viewers in other areas of Manchester.
However, the live screening of Mozart's Marriage of Figaro, which will be aired June 28 when the opera is performed in Covent Gardens' Royal Opera House, still has the scheduling go-ahead.
Apparently, opera is considered less capable of inciting public disturbance than soccer, but 220 years ago, the BBC (had it existed then) might have reconsidered its choice of broadcasting material.
Anything by Mozart seems harmless enough today, as far removed from the immediate cultural context as it is, yet back in the late 1700s, Mozart's little Italian opera was considered subversive and nearly banned. The libretto (the first of three da Ponte libretti written for Mozart) was based on a play by French watch-maker, revolutionary, and playwright Pierre Beaumarchais.
The plot, in which the peasants outwit the aristocracy and thus prove their equal intelligence, threatened to overturn the already precarious social order of the day. Although 1786 (when The Marriage of Figaro was composed) still preceded the French Revolution, relations between the classes were already strained throughout Europe and Emperor Josef II of Austria did not care to fan the flames.
Only through judicious censorship of Figaro's especially radical (for the time) monologues on social equality was Mozart able to convince the emperor to allow the opera on stage. Nor would The Marriage of Figaro be the last Mozart opera that challenged the social norms of the day.
Don Giovanni, another da Ponte/Mozart collaboration, also presented a member of the artistocracy in a less than favorable light. According to 18th-century philosophy, a person's position in the social structure was directly related to his or her intrinsic character: the nobility were titled as such because they are more "noble" than the peasants.
To see members of the aristocracy (Count Almaviva in The Marriage of Figaro and the title character in Don Giovanni) succumb to their appetites (gluttony and sexuality) rather than disciplining their flesh with their rational wills directly contradicted the mores that had governed society for years.
