Where Figaro Gets His Start

The Barber of Seville by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is somewhat entertaining; I suspect it would be a little more entertaining in the actual theater, performed instead of read. That's what pushed a 3.5 or so in my head to a 4. I'm sure this is funny in person.

The Benjamin Franklin series, where he meets with Beaumarchais in Paris, got me interested in reading this. I only have a vague idea of Figaro, mostly informed by Bugs Bunny cartoons, and assumed they were only operas. I didn't know that Beaumarchais was such a renaissance man, and I didn't know he wrote these plays (and got himself in trouble for them).

Part of my misapprehension, corrected by reading this first one, was that these were highbrow tales. I mean, opera, right? LOL. Nope.

So, as far as plotting and dialogue, this whole play is just Figaro helping Count Almaviva get access to Rosine, a beautiful young woman who is going to be forced to marry her guardian, Bartholo. (First of all--wtf? Who does this. Second--I recall an older Spanish play that is almost the exact thing, with the same opening sequence in the street outside the window...) Bartholo is a jerk taking advantage of a helpless young woman, so he's the villain, but literally everyone else spends most of the play lying or scheming to lie. Or accepting bribes.

The dishonesty strikes me as odd, and not very honorable in main characters. It's acceptable, maybe, to defeat the villain, but it's weird. I've had the same thought reading Dumas, where characters lie to each other and aren't even embarrassed when caught in the lies since, apparently, everyone else would do the same thing. I'm not sure if this is a coincidence, a cultural thing, or if it's a convention of French literature, but it's surprising to me. I'm trying to think of a non-villain in English literature of a similar era who lies like these guys do. Not Darcy or Edmund, for example. But I guess Tom Jones gets away with lies and bad behavior. Hmm. Maybe it's the era.....

So here, Figaro, kind of a trickster, is working to get all the servants sick or sleeping and get Bartholo out of the house so the count can sneak in and marry the girl. The comedy is in the lying and the goofy songs they are singing extemporaneously and, especially, the moments when the count (in disguise as a music teacher) is trying to whisper with Rosine, while the jealous and suspicious Bartholo keeps intervening.

It's a romp is what I'm saying. It's just young good guys outwitting an old jerk, tricking him and making up quick lies to win the girl away from him. That's fun.

The second play, The Marriage of Figaro, is supposed to be more subversive, more of a commentary on society and nobility, and it's the one that got Beaumarchais in trouble. I'm eager to see if it feels meatier. But sometimes something light and silly is just fine.

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