{"id":1624,"date":"2014-02-28T08:26:53","date_gmt":"2014-02-28T13:26:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=1624"},"modified":"2014-03-10T08:30:38","modified_gmt":"2014-03-10T12:30:38","slug":"figaro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=1624","title":{"rendered":"Figaro"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-admin\/Figaro, McCarter Theatre, Stephen Wadsworth, Barber of Seville\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft\" title=\"Figaro, McCarter Theatre, Stephen Wadsworth, Barber of Seville\" alt=\"Figaro, McCarter Theatre, Stephen Wadsworth, Barber of Seville\" src=\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/2\/21\/Nozze_di_Figaro_Scene_19th_century.jpg\" width=\"325\" height=\"353\" \/><\/a>Princeton\u2019s <a href=\"http:\/\/www.mccarter.org\/ticketoffice\/eventdetail.aspx?page_id=7&amp;event_id=8393\">McCarter Theatre<\/a> is putting on two Beaumarchais farces\u2014<i>The Barber of Seville<\/i> (1773) and <i>The Marriage of Figaro <\/i>(1778)\u2014in \u00a0repertory this spring. The plays, better known in their operatic versions, are new translations by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.juilliard.edu\/journal\/stephen-wadsworth?destination=node\/13216\">Stephen Wadsworth<\/a> (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.<\/p>\n<p>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 <i>Figaro.<\/i> They portray these two characters in both plays, a feat impossible in opera, because those works by Rossini and Mozart (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=8OZCyp-LcGw\">musical interlude<\/a>) are set in different registers and require different voices. Following the scene was a brief talk by Wadsworth.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cComedy is the costume that politics wears,\u201d Wadsworth said and emphasized the timing of the two works, written shortly before the French Revolution. In <i>Figaro,<\/i> the chief dilemma is that Count Almaviva, who is the employer of Figaro and Suzanne, desires to reassert an old right of <i>primae noctis<\/i> and be the one to deflower Suzanne on her wedding night. The play\u2019s depiction of aristocratic arrogance was a significant cultural influence on the French populace, and Georges Danton himself said the play \u201ckilled off the nobility.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>To make his social satires acceptable to the powers-that-be, Beaumarchais set them in Spain, but his packed audiences got the message, anyway. \u201c<i>L\u2019Escalier du Capitole<\/i>\u201d of the 1770s. Can\u2019t wait to see them on stage! April 1 \u2013 May 4, 2014.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Princeton\u2019s McCarter Theatre is putting on two Beaumarchais farces\u2014The Barber of Seville (1773) and The Marriage of Figaro (1778)\u2014in \u00a0repertory this spring. The plays, better known in their operatic versions, are new translations by Stephen Wadsworth (opera director at Julliard). &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=1624\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Figaro","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[61,104,147],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-character","category-the-morgue","category-theater"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2NkiT-figaro","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1624"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1626,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1624\/revisions\/1626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}