The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro (, ), K. 492, is an opera buffa (comic opera) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, "La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro" ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"), which was first performed in 1784. It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.
The Ghosts of Versailles
The cast of the opera-within-the-opera is introduced. It is twenty years after the events of "The Marriage of Figaro". Figaro appears, chased by his wife Susanna, his employer Count Almaviva, his many creditors and quite a lot of women claiming he is the father of their children. Figaro, now aging but still as wily and clever as ever, lists his many achievements in a lengthy aria. Meanwhile, Count Almaviva is engaged in a secret plan to sell Marie Antoinette's jeweled necklace to the English ambassador to buy the Queen's freedom. The Count, Beaumarchais explains, is estranged from his wife Rosina due to her affair, years earlier, with the now-dead Cherubino, an assignation which produced a son, Léon. Léon wants to marry Florestine, Almaviva's illegitimate daughter (by a lady of the Court well-known to Marie Antoinette, according to Beaumarchais), but the Count has forbidden the union as retribution for his wife's infidelity and has promised Florestine instead to his friend Patrick Honoré Bégearss.