Music and Personality in Mozart
Le Nozze di Figaro

In opera, as in life, some people are just more interesting than others. Nobody in Lohengrin has the passionate intensity of the arch-villain Ortrud. The lovely Aida has wonderful music to sing and she certainly engages our sympathy, but she is one undifferentiated brow of woe compared to the protean Amneris with her shifting and passionate surges of emotion. Mozart's people too come in various personal guises. Tamino is clearly meant to be as stiff and formal as Papageno is bouncy and lovable. But in Le Nozze di Figaro every one of the main characters is so completely fleshed out that they are fully engrossing from beginning to end of the opera. Mozart had a wonderful capacity to project personality through music and in Figaro he exercised it with enormous skill.

Character, obviously, is more than the sum of behavioral qualities that a person exhibits. It is the inner structure, the deep ambiguities often hidden and always difficult to decipher, that determine just who a person is. Milan Kundera speaks somewhat mysteriously of "the wisdom of uncertainty" that especially defines personal identity. Gnomic though the utterance may be, it touches on the sense we all have of hidden reality in people which we find hard to reach. It is precisely here that music can strip away external disguises and lay bare the inner being, and Mozart is a supreme master at it.

Take, as an example, the contacts between Figaro and his master, the Count. The once young and romantic Almaviva is now the lord of the manor, exercising his power with an ill-disguised sense of superiority. But the ever resourceful Figaro has lost none of his skill at manipulating people and events. Towards the end of the first scene there is a brief dialogue between the two in which Figaro, with an irony just short of sarcasm reminds the Count that he can no longer exercise his right to have his way with Susanna before her marriage. "We all admire your wisdom" in abandoning this barbarous custom, says Figaro. The Count seethes under his breath ("devilish cunning"), as much at Figaro's sly insolence as at the threat to his personal prestige. Later on the Count will complain about it at greater length in his aria "Vedrò, mentr'io sospiro," but here the essence of the conflict between the two springs out of the sparkling recitative.

A word about the recitatives in the opera. When properly performed, they are not just dry (although they are called "secco"!) stretches which we put up with until the next aria comes along. They are structural elements, carefully calibrated to enhance our understanding of the characters who sing them. They follow a standardized pattern, but they are not "formulaic" in a derogatory sense. A common mistake is to dash through them at top speed, whereas they really call for clean, crisp articulation, both musical and verbal.

Of course the big arias bear the greatest weight in revealing the identity of the characters. Right at the outset, Figaro's "Se vuol ballare" gives us the clever servant, light of foot and voice, eager to best the master who threatens his well being. In the last scene, Figaro is himself caught up in the crazy intrigue of the plot, thinking erroneously that Susanna is out to betray him, sonorously warning the men in the audience to steer clear of all the female machinations he earnestly sets out before them. How cunningly the music manages to support Figaro's contention while at the same time suggesting amusingly how thoroughly he has been duped.

These two arias exhibit the extent of Mozart's genius at revealing character. The pizzicato notes in "Se vuol ballare" mimic the lithe movements of a skilled dancer, but they constitute only the outward sign of Figaro's quick-witted approach to overcoming his opponent; they are more important in making us aware of the mental acumen of this "birbo" (trickster), as Dr. Bartolo slightingly refers to him. In his fourth-act aria, his description of women's wiles-they are thorny, merciless, as tricky as he is-takes place in a cascade of epithets that requires in the singer great breath control along with careful sculpting of the musical line.

Cherubino, strictly speaking, is not absolutely essential to the plot, but the opera would certainly be the poorer without this bumptious teenager mooning about the premises and upsetting apple carts at every turn. His two arias exemplify Mozart's command of musical language to differentiate distinct aspects of character. In the first, "Non so più," he is the skittish, restless adolescent, utterly confused by his emotions but lapping them up with great glee. Later, in "Voi che sapete," he is calmer and perhaps, just perhaps, a bit closer to thinking about love with some maturity. Not yet a ladies' man, he is intent on being more than a boy to the objects of his affection.

Which brings us to the female contingent in the house. Susanna is the perfect counterpart to her intended spouse. She shares Figaro's quick wit and sparkling gaiety, but with a feminine charm that easily explains the Count's fascination with her. Right off the bat, she is aware sooner than Figaro of the Count's plan to have easy access to the newlyweds' apartment. In every turn of the plot she seems to be one step ahead of the men at work. In this respect she is perhaps the most Shakespearean of Mozart's heroines, sharing with them acute intelligence and firmness of purpose; Mozart would have done wonders in portraying Viola or Rosalind in music. At the same time Susanna is a delightful romantic. Her "Deh, vieni, non tardar" in the final scene, although on one level a ploy to deceive Figaro into thinking she is longing for the Count, subliminally is a song filled with the fragrance and warmth of a young woman reaching out to the only real object of her love. The musical combination of brightness and romantic charm makes Susanna one of Mozart's most endearing characters.

The Countess inhabits a completely different realm, but she is no less remarkable as a flesh and blood personage. If Susanna represents the head, the Countess is all heart. Although she enters fully into the intrigue of the plot and enjoys the fun involved, there is no question that she is weighed down by a deeper kind of emotion. Her entrance aria, "Porgi, amor," lays bare the sense of loss and sorrow of a woman who fears that love has passed her by. The lush combination of strings and woodwinds in the orchestra supports and enhances the deep melancholy in her voice. This fundamental aspect of her personal plight does not make her a gloomy, joyless figure, but it does foreshadow the seriousness of the great moment at the end of the opera when she redeems the "crazy day" of the original Beaumarchais title with transcendent grace.

The role of the Countess in binding everything together in this work is highlighted by the precise position of "Porgi, amor" in the score. Figaro's jaunty "Non più andrai" at the end of the first scene is no kind of finale. The Countess, one of the chief figures in the opera, cannot be kept waiting through an intermission, but needs to be introduced right here as a major factor in the action. Her cavatina/lament is inserted at this precise moment to remind us that Figaro, no less than Don Giovanni, is a dramma giocoso, its serious side carefully balanced against the comic.

These first two scenes of the opera must be kept together because the whole arc of the first part of Figaro culminates in the madcap concertato at the end of the second scene, one of Mozart's most exhilarating musical inventions. This in turn is paralleled at the end of the work with another free-for-all when all the characters join in a mammoth celebration of the triumph of love and the happiness it brings. The multiple complications, the confusion and trickery have all been resolved. But the finale is not the supreme moment in the work.

Moments before, Susanna and Figaro have been reconciled after a momentary misunderstanding, and the Count has been found out and stands in sheepish embarrassment. His plea for forgiveness from his wife rings rather hollow and there is little ground for supposing that he will not go astray again; to paraphrase, quite justly, the title of another Mozart opera, "all men are like that." The Countess might quite properly spurn his contrition, but she does not. In keeping with the nobility of soul that is clearly her true personal identity, which Mozart paints for us in such glorious musical colors, she draws the Count to her in a gesture of open-hearted forgiveness. The Countess is no fool; she knows her husband all too well. But her love is stronger than the sum of his failings. Her inner largesse could not be constrained by petty resentment.

The word "sublime" has been used before in this context and runs the risk of exaggeration, but there is scarcely another to describe the music that Mozart gives to the Countess at this point. Here we have one of those rare moments in opera which, once heard, stamps itself indelibly on one's inner sensibility. The entire passage lasts barely two minutes, but time seems to stand still. An air of indescribable sadness suffuses the whole; it plumbs the depths of pain and loss to which human experience can descend. And yet there is also a hint of the strength with which a great heart can face the greatest sorrow. It echoes Beethoven's words written into one of his manuscripts: "Es muss sein." It must be; this is what it means to be human.

The Countess, answering the Count's plea for forgiveness, sings a simple, broadly arching melody to the words "Più docil' io sono." Hard to translate: perhaps something like, I give more than forgiveness; I open myself for you to see the vast expanse of my love. And then, "E dico di sì" - the truly redemptive word of Yes. Above any hint of bitterness, even beyond the perhaps irreparable breach in our union, I reach out and touch what I can only hope is the best in you. And all the others present declare "Ah, tutti contenti saremo così." This grace-filled generosity showers its blessed healing on us all. The strings pour out an accompaniment of unparalleled sweetness and strength, and the soprano line reaches ever higher in its affirmation of gratitude and wonder.

The genius of Mozart was so prodigious that one is compelled to ask how one human being could have encompassed it all. There is really no answer to that; it takes all of one's mental and psychological powers just to respond to this titanic output. And yet the genius is at the service of the most basic human realities. Mozart was lucky to have the services of a great man of letters; librettist Lorenzo da Ponte's superior verbal and dramatic talent provided an indispensable base of operation. But what the composer accomplished is above and beyond the quality of any libretto. The music of Figaro makes each character in the drama a distinct individual, full-blooded and fully alive. For a few short hours we share their adventures, and exclaim along with them, "Ah, how happy we are to share in your joy."

Basil De Pinto is a writer who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. His work has appeared in the program books of the opera companies of Washington, D.C., Seattle, Atlanta and Fort Worth.