Princeton’s McCarter Theatre is putting on two Beaumarchais farces—The Barber of Seville (1773) and The Marriage of Figaro (1778)—in  repertory this spring. The plays, better known in their operatic versions, are new translations by Stephen Wadsworth (opera director at Julliard). In the 1990s at McCarter, Wadsworth successfully remounted three neglected plays by 18th c. French playwright Marivaux and has a distinguished directorial career in theater and opera throughout the world.

I had the chance to see the charming actors playing Figaro and his bride-to-be Suzanne in an early rehearsal of the first scene of Figaro. They portray these two characters in both plays, a feat impossible in opera, because those works by Rossini and Mozart (musical interlude) are set in different registers and require different voices. Following the scene was a brief talk by Wadsworth.

“Comedy is the costume that politics wears,” Wadsworth said and emphasized the timing of the two works, written shortly before the French Revolution. In Figaro, the chief dilemma is that Count Almaviva, who is the employer of Figaro and Suzanne, desires to reassert an old right of primae noctis and be the one to deflower Suzanne on her wedding night. The play’s depiction of aristocratic arrogance was a significant cultural influence on the French populace, and Georges Danton himself said the play “killed off the nobility.”

To make his social satires acceptable to the powers-that-be, Beaumarchais set them in Spain, but his packed audiences got the message, anyway. “L’Escalier du Capitole” of the 1770s. Can’t wait to see them on stage! April 1 – May 4, 2014.