A young couple wants to marry. But for this they need the permission of their employer, who moreover has the right to spend the wedding night with the bride. Ius primae noctis, “the law of the first night” is the name of this traditional feudal privilege, which despite enlightenment by the installation of civil rights and the liberalization of society structures had still not been completely abolished everywhere up to the time of the First World War. In the opera “The Marriage of Figaro” by Mozart (1756-1791), which was adapted from the critical social comedy of the same title by Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, the Count uses this droit de Seigneur to apply pressure on his wife’s chambermaid Susanna to yield to his lust. Implicit when Beaumarchais was writing was that to resist this coercion was to be regarded as a subversive rebellion against a social order which presupposed that one man is in possession of all power and can rule over everyone else.

In Mozart’s opera buffa a different approach prevails: Ivan Nagel talks of “a presumption to inequality in the buffa community of equals”. And indeed Mozart as composer subjects none of the figures to a predefined rank. Whether Count or maid, lady or servant, not to forget an intriguing music-teacher and the gardener, music legitimizes them all and has them confronting each other on level terms. Where Beaumarchais had dared to attack an established social order, Mozart operates on an open heart. It ends with a “perdono”, devoutly sung by all, which does not just make the best of an intrigue against love and fidelity; it also establishes how unprotected people are, and thereby what an unalienable value lies in the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” with which we are all familiar since it was thus formulated in the American Declaration of Independence.

The well-known opera director and theatre manager Michael Hampe calls “Le nozze di Figaro” a “real piece” with situations which can be socially determined and which must therefore be allotted suitably definite space. The intrigues of which the work is full move out into the open at the end, where all the various forms of love seem conceivable and, as the quintessence of the work, thereby expose the absurdity of class-consciousness.

 
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Le nozze di Figaro

Opera buffa in four acts KV 492
Libretto by Lorenzo da Ponte

 
In Italian with German surtitles
 

Musikalische Leitung Axel Kober
Inszenierung Michael Hampe
Bühne und Kostüme German Droghetti
Licht Manfred Voss
Chorleitung Gerhard Michalski
Choreografie Michal Matys
Dramaturgie Hella Bartnig
 
Graf Almaviva Laimonas Pautienius
Gräfin Almaviva Sylvia Hamvasi
Susanna Anett Fritsch
Figaro David Jerusalem
Cherubino Maria Kataeva
Marcellina Marta Márquez
Basilio Bruce Rankin
Don Curzio Paul Stefan Onaga
Bartolo Sami Luttinen
Antonio Daniel Djambazian
Barbarina Luiza Fatyol
Brautjungfer Diana Klee
Chor Chor der Deutschen Oper am Rhein
Orchester Duisburger Philharmoniker