Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799) was an exceptional French writer of prose comedy during the eighteenth century. He is best known for his theatrical works of the three Figaro plays. Beaumarchais had an action-filled career as a watchmaker, musician, secret agent, businessman, diplomat and a financer of revolutions. His literary career was as turbulent as his personal life. After a series of lawsuits in Paris, the accounts of his trials...

"The Marriage of Figaro" is the second in the Figaro Trilogy, preceded by "The Barber of Seville" and followed by "The Guilty Mother". It was originally a comic opera, or a mixture of spoken play with music. This play was considered a foreshadowing of the French Revolution in its offense of the rights of the aristocracy. It was first banned in Vienna due to its satire of the nobility, considered dangerous in the decade before the revolution. Thanks...

LIve performance of the Mozart opera, taking "A neo-Classical approach. This is the only suitable adjective to define what we are looking for, with our period instruments, our fast tempos, the performance of the recitatives, the ornaments added here and there by the singers, and a few other features that may surprise the audience: an approach that is ... neo-Classical, as opposed to the post-Romantic one which began to determine our listening habits...

Preparing for their wedding, the valet Figaro learns from the maid Susanna that their philandering employer, Count Almaviva, has designs on her. In her boudoir, the Countess laments her husband's waning love but plots to chasten him, encouraged by Figaro and Susanna. Susanna leads the Count on with promises of a rendezvous in the garden. Alone later that day, Susanna rhapsodizes on her love for Figaro, but he, overhearing, thinks she means the Count....