Mozart's Marriage of Figaro: A Short Guide to a Great Opera

Although the story of Figaro's success in preventing the Count of Almaviva's seduction of his fiancée Susanna was politically explosive, it was tolerated in the court of the relatively enlightened Habsburg Emperor Joseph II. Mozart's opera, Le Nozze di Figaro, uses a libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte, and was premièred in Vienna in 1786. It was based on a famous play by the Frenchman Beaumarchais, a sequel to The Barber of Seville. Characters including Figaro, the Countess, Cherubino the page, D...