My latest French course on the Enlightenment - Les Lumières - was a good reminder of how much we forget what we've learned at school. I thought I knew enough about classical music and Mozart, but I don't remember ever reading about him in the context of Enlightenment, not to mention how many other important things about that period I had forgotten. For now, let's focus on the great Wolfgang Amadeus.
Mozart’s short life span, from 1756 to 1791, unfolded during an era when the ideals of the Enlightenment - reason, liberty, equality, and universal human rights, championed by some of the greatest minds of the time - had taken root among the elites and were beginning to spread among the common people. The works of the Enlightenment thinkers Hobbes, Locke, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Voltaire and others inspired new generations of writers and philosophers and sparked social movements demanding liberty, equality, and justice for all.
The child prodigy proved to be incredibly prolific. Thus, when the Viennese court commissioned an opera from him for a reception hosted by the Austrian Emperor Joseph II, he was ready to venture into uncharted territory. His opera Die Entführung aus dem Serail —written in German, a language then deemed unsuitable for the operatic genre—met with great success. This triumph enabled him a few years later to propose an even bolder project: an opera in Italian based on Beaumarchais’s censored French play The Marriage of Figaro.
Censors and the Court deemed it offensive due to its scathing critiques directed at the privileged classes. Despite opposition from influential factions within the Viennese court, Mozart and his Italian librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, managed to negotiate the approval of this project, creating Le nozze di Figaro which is still regarded today as one of the greatest operas ever written. It is not known which methods of persuasion they employed, but it is likely that the libretto, which features several notable departures from Beaumarchais’s original play, helped give the work the appearance of harmless entertainment. Numerous episodes and minor characters were excised, and the plot was streamlined for better clarity and coherence. However, some changes had the effect of transforming the sharper critiques of the aristocracy into a form of playful teasing that ridicules human foibles in general.
The central theme of Le nozze di Figaro is the abusive behavior of those in power toward the lower classes. The main characters are servants Figaro and Susanna, who are about to get married. Their master, Count Almaviva, wishes to exercise an ancient feudal right - le droit du seigneur - to sleep with Susanna on the very night of her wedding to Figaro. The Count had, in fact, renounced the outdated practice upon his own marriage to Rosina, aiming to portray himself as an enlightened man. Yet, once married, he often exercises his "right" to sleep with young females in his employ. While an unfaithful husband, he is also a man consumed by pathological jealousy regarding the attentions paid by the young Cherubino to his wife. One of the most comical scenes takes place in the opera's second act: the Count visits his wife in her boudoir, at the moment she happens to be there in the company of Cherubino. Aided by Susanna, the Countess hurriedly covers Cherubino with a sheet and then locks him inside a wardrobe, while the Count grows suspicious of his wife's nervousness.
By making the servants rather than the masters the central characters of the opera, Mozart broke with a long-standing tradition in which protagonists were typically classical heroes, gods and goddesses, kings and queens, or mythological figures. In the opening scene, Figaro, Count Almaviva’s valet, measures the dimensions of his future marital bed, while his fiancée, Susanna, the countess's personal maid, puts the finishing touches on the hat she will wear later that day for their wedding. Their joyful mood turns serious when Susanna reveals to Figaro that the Count’s plan to seduce her before their wedding night.
Figaro, furious to learn that his master intends to reward his loyalty with betrayal, vows to outwit him in a spirited cavatina: "Se vuoi ballare, signor contino, il chitarrino ti suonerò" ("If you want to dance, little Count, I will play the music for you").
Figaro brings a group of peasants before Almaviva under the pretext of praising him for abolishing the archaic droit du seigneur, but in reality, to remind him that he must keep his promise to renounce it. The count finds an excuse to disappear. The servants, joined by the betrayed Countess, devise another stratagem to unmask the Count’s hypocrisy and preserve their dignity, and Almaviva’s perfidious plan is foiled. He receives a humiliating lesson in front of his entire staff. However, once his misdeeds are brought to light, he does not react with anger, but admits his guilt and publicly begs his wife’s forgiveness, in most productions on his knees.
A subplot in The Marriage of Figaro reveals that Figaro is the illegitimate son of Dr. Bartolo and Marcellina—a man and a woman of a higher social rank than the valet. Before learning that he was their son, the older couple had been conspiring to force him to marry the very woman who would turn out to be his own mother. But once the indiscretion of their past is brought to light, the bourgeois couple sets about rectifying the errors of their youth.
The lower classes relied on ingenuity rather than confrontation to achieve justice and the upper class acted reasonably when confronted with their sins. The peaceful resolution reflects the optimism of the Enlightenment - specifically the conviction that a just society is built upon reason, introspection, and moral reform, rather than violence. The ingenuity and moral superiority of the servants echo the ideas of Enlightenment thinkers such as Montaigne, Rousseau, Voltaire, and others, who championed equal rights for all, meritocracy, and the limitation of despotic power. Figaro’s resistance to the Count’s purportedly enlightened behavior highlights the chasm separating professed rationality from the persistent tyranny of the upper classes. The opera’s humor subtly suggests that the old order must adapt, or suffer the consequences.
Musically, Mozart’s score also embodies Enlightenment values—reason, individual merit, emotional authenticity, and rational order emerging from confusion. One of its most striking features lies in its musical ensembles: duets, trios, and grand collectives. Thus, in the Act II finale, seven characters sing simultaneously—"Che bel colpo, che bel caso"—expressing contradictory emotions and shifting dramatic situations, ultimately resolving into a harmonious order. In the spirit of the Enlightenment, the opera’s grandiose finale, "Ah! Tutti contenti," unites masters and servants in a song of joy and jubilation.
These complex ensembles have no direct equivalent in Beaumarchais’s work. Da Ponte’s celebrated verses for arias such as Figaro’s "Non più andrai," the Countess’s "Porgi amor," and Susanna’s "Deh vieni, non tardar" also diverge from the original French play.
First performed at Vienna’s Burgtheater in 1786, Le nozze di Figaro - an opera buffa in four acts - thus reflects the fundamental ideals of the 18th century: reason, the primacy of individual merit over birthright, equality, and resistance to arbitrary authority. It also pays tribute to the capabilities and intelligence of women struggling to stay afloat in a male-dominated world. Overall, the work celebrates spiritual and moral equality across genders and classes, as well as individual’s worth based on decency and strength of character.
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| Emperor Joseph II |
In reality, things are different. Mozart’s employer, Emperor Joseph II, also considered himself an enlightened monarch. His reforms included compulsory education for boys and girls, religious tolerance, the abolition of serfdom, and a reduction in power for the Church and the nobility. There is no evidence that he ever mistreated women or servants. However, fierce resistance from the clergy and the aristocracy forced him to revoke many of his reforms before his death.
Barely three years after the premiere of Le nozze di Figaro in Vienna, France erupted in a revolution that completely overturned its social order. The Austrian Emperor died in 1790, spared from witnessing the gruesome execution of his sister, Marie Antoinette, at the hands of French revolutionaries.
Mozart died in 1791, at the age of 35. Despite his phenomenal talent and the success of his work, the celebrated musician passed away in poverty and was buried in an unmarked common grave. A court musician was little more than a servant in the employ of a wealthy patron. Joseph II may have been benevolent toward him, but a scene in Miloš Forman’s film Amadeus depicts Mozart’s previous employer, the Archbishop of Salzburg, ordering him to leave Vienna for a minor transgression. When Mozart offers to resign, the Archbishop retorts: “You will remain in my service and learn to know your place.” Whether Mozart obeyed or not, this order reveals that the Archbishop viewed him as a servant.
So Mozart likely identified with Figaro and took pleasure in employing subtle humor to satirize everything that, in his view, was wrong with his world. The opera’s success demonstrated the capacity of the arts to examine the broader repercussions of human actions and behaviors, especially the abuse of power. Thanks to its universal themes—justice, reason, peace, love, and reconciliation, Le Nozze di Figaro remains, 240 years after its premiere, one of the most performed and celebrated operas of all time.
