An elegantly decorated room in the castle where the wedding will take place.

Alone, the Count ponders the confusing situation. Unseen by the Count, the Countess urges a reluctant Susanna to go ahead with Figaro’s plan and tell the Count that she will meet him in the garden later. Because Cherubino is gone, the Countess will impersonate Susanna. The Countess leaves. Susanna overhears the Count talking to himself about Figaro marrying Marcellina. Emboldened, she approaches him, claiming that she has come to get some smelling salts for the Countess, who is having a fainting fit. He tells her that she should keep the salts for herself because she is about to lose her intended husband. She counters that she will repay Marcellina’s loan with the dowry the Count had promised her. But the Count claims he cannot remember any such promise. She has no choice but to flirt with him, and they agree to meet in the garden at night. But as she is leaving, she runs into Figaro, and the Count overhears her saying that they have “won the case.” Enraged, the Count threatens to punish them for their betrayal (“Vedrò mentr’io sospiro”).

The judge Don Curzio arrives with Marcellina and Bartolo. He announces that Figaro must marry Marcellina or repay the loan. Figaro claims that he is of noble birth and cannot marry without his relatives’ consent. When the Count asks who they are, Figaro replies that he was stolen as an infant but hopes to find his parents within 10 years. Bartolo demands proof of his claim, so Figaro shows him a birthmark on his arm—a birthmark that reveals that he is the love child of Marcellina and Bartolo. The reunited family embrace as the frustrated Count rails against fate. Meanwhile, Susanna, unaware of this development, arrives with the money to pay Marcellina, only to be enraged by the sight of Figaro and his mother fondly embracing. But peace reigns when all is explained to her. The Count storms off with Don Curzio. Bartolo proposes marriage to Marcellina. Marcellina tears up Figaro’s debt. Bartolo gives Figaro and Susanna a dowry, and Susanna adds to it the money she had come in with. The four, chuckling at the Count’s frustration, go off to plan a double wedding.

The Countess enters, wondering if the plan to catch the Count will work and recalling sadly the loss of their love (“Dove sono”). After she leaves, Antonio and the Count arrive. Antonio tells the Count that he knows that Cherubino is still in the vicinity, because he found at his house the women’s clothing that Cherubino had been wearing. They run off to look for him. The Countess returns with Susanna, and the two concoct a note, from Susanna to the Count, asking for a meeting in the garden. They seal the note with a pin, which the Count is to return if he agrees to meet her.

Barbarina and some peasant girls, including Cherubino in disguise, come to serenade the Countess. Antonio and the Count return to unmask Cherubino, to the consternation of the Countess. The Count threatens to punish the boy, but Barbarina persuades the Count—who had once, with kisses, promised her anything she wanted—to let her marry Cherubino.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Mozart rehearsing his 12th Mass with singer and musician. (Austrian composer. (Johann Chrysostom Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart)
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Figaro arrives, eager for the wedding preparations to begin. The Count begins to cross-examine him again, and Antonio produces Cherubino as proof that they have caught Figaro lying. But Figaro cleverly claims that it is possible that both he and Cherubino had jumped into the garden. The wedding march begins, and everyone goes off to get ready, leaving the Count and Countess alone. She refuses to discuss her confusion about Cherubino with him. The wedding party returns in procession, singing another paean to the abolition of the feudal right to sleep with the bride. Susanna slips the sealed note to the Count. As the couples dance the fandango, the Count opens the note, pricks his finger on the pin, and drops it. Figaro watches him with great amusement, believing the note to be from some unknown lady. The Count finds the pin, thrilled at the prospect of meeting Susanna later, and invites everyone to a magnificent wedding banquet.

Act IV

The castle garden.

Barbarina, terribly upset, is searching the garden for something that she has lost (“L’ho perduta, me meschina!”). When Figaro arrives with Marcellina and asks the weeping girl what is wrong, she replies that she has lost the pin that the Count gave her to deliver to Susanna as a token of their tryst. Angry, but pretending that he already knows all about it, he plucks a pin from Marcellina’s dress and gives it to Barbarina, who goes off to give it to Susanna. Figaro collapses into his mother’s arms. She advises him to stay calm, but rage overtakes him and he vows to avenge all deceived husbands. Marcellina, afraid for Susanna, leaves to warn her. Figaro then enlists Basilio and Bartolo to help trap the lovers. Alone again, he denounces the perfidy of women (“Aprite un po’ quegli occhi”). He hides as Susanna arrives, accompanied by Marcellina and the Countess. Marcellina warns Susanna that Figaro is already in the garden. That suits Susanna just fine, as she can avenge herself on both Figaro for his jealousy and the Count for his philandering. Marcellina retires into the pavilion. The Countess is too nervous to remain but allows Susanna to stay for a bit to enjoy the breezes. Susanna sings a love song to an unnamed lover to punish the spying Figaro (“Deh, vieni, non tardar, o gioia bella”). Then she hides nearby and puts on the Countess’s cloak.

Figaro is furious, but he continues to lie in wait. Cherubino arrives, looking for Barbarina, who has meanwhile hidden herself in the pavilion. At the same time, the Countess enters, disguised as Susanna. Cherubino, not realizing who she really is, begins flirting with her. The Count comes in and receives the kiss Cherubino has meant for “Susanna.” The Count slaps Cherubino for his impudence, and the boy flees into the pavilion. Now the Count does some flirting of his own with “Susanna,” and Figaro becomes even angrier. The Count tries to lure “Susanna” into the dark pavilion. But hearing Figaro’s voice and fearing discovery, he tells her to go into the pavilion without him. He exits, promising to meet her later.

The real Susanna arrives, disguised as the Countess. When Figaro hears her voice, he immediately realizes who she is. He pretends to court the “Countess.” Susanna is furious until he reveals his joke, and they tenderly reconcile. When the Count returns, the couple replay the joke. The enraged Count seizes Figaro and calls for weapons. “The Countess” flees into the pavilion as Bartolo, Basilio, Antonio, and Curzio rush in. The Count demands that his wife come out of the pavilion. To everyone’s amazement, out pop Cherubino, Barbarina, Marcellina, and Susanna, who is still dressed as the Countess. She and Figaro pretend to beg the Count’s forgiveness. He refuses, and the Countess reveals herself. The chastened Count humbly asks her pardon. She grants it, and everyone rejoices.

Linda Cantoni
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (born January 27, 1756, Salzburg, archbishopric of Salzburg [Austria]—died December 5, 1791, Vienna) was an Austrian composer, widely recognized as one of the greatest composers in the history of Western music. With Haydn and Beethoven he brought to its height the achievement of the Viennese Classical school. Unlike any other composer in musical history, he wrote in all the musical genres of his day and excelled in every one. His taste, his command of form, and his range of expression have made him seem the most universal of all composers; yet, it may also be said that his music was written to accommodate the specific tastes of particular audiences.

Early life and works

Mozart most commonly called himself Wolfgang Amadé or Wolfgang Gottlieb. His father, Leopold, came from a family of good standing (from which he was estranged), which included architects and bookbinders. Leopold was the author of a famous violin-playing manual, which was published in the very year of Mozart’s birth. His mother, Anna Maria Pertl, was born of a middle-class family active in local administration. Mozart and his sister Maria Anna (“Nannerl”) were the only two of their seven children to survive.

The boy’s early talent for music was remarkable. At three he was picking out chords on the harpsichord, at four playing short pieces, at five composing. There are anecdotes about his precise memory of pitch, about his scribbling a concerto at the age of five, and about his gentleness and sensitivity (he was afraid of the trumpet). Just before he was six, his father took him and Nannerl, also highly talented, to Munich to play at the Bavarian court, and a few months later they went to Vienna and were heard at the imperial court and in noble houses.

“The miracle which God let be born in Salzburg” was Leopold’s description of his son, and he was keenly conscious of his duty to God, as he saw it, to draw the miracle to the notice of the world (and incidentally to profit from doing so). In mid-1763 he obtained a leave of absence from his position as deputy Kapellmeister at the prince-archbishop’s court at Salzburg, and the family set out on a prolonged tour. They went to what were all the main musical centres of western Europe—Munich, Augsburg, Stuttgart, Mannheim, Mainz, Frankfurt, Brussels, and Paris (where they remained for the winter), then London (where they spent 15 months), returning through The Hague, Amsterdam, Paris, Lyon, and Switzerland, and arriving back in Salzburg in November 1766. In most of these cities Mozart, and often his sister, played and improvised, sometimes at court, sometimes in public or in a church. Leopold’s surviving letters to friends in Salzburg tell of the universal admiration that his son’s achievements aroused. In Paris they met several German composers, and Mozart’s first music was published (sonatas for keyboard and violin, dedicated to a royal princess); in London they met, among others, Johann Christian Bach, Johann Sebastian Bach’s youngest son and a leading figure in the city’s musical life, and under his influence Mozart composed his first symphonies—three survive (K 16, K 19, and K 19a—K signifying the work’s place in the catalog of Ludwig von Köchel). Two more followed during a stay in The Hague on the return journey (K 22 and K 45a).

After little more than nine months in Salzburg the Mozarts set out for Vienna in September 1767, where (apart from a 10-week break during a smallpox epidemic) they spent 15 months. Mozart wrote a one-act German singspiel, Bastien und Bastienne, which was given privately. Greater hopes were attached to his prospect of having an Italian opera buffa, La finta semplice (“The Feigned Simpleton”), done at the court theatre—hopes that were, however, frustrated, much to Leopold’s indignation. But a substantial, festal mass setting (probably K 139/47a) was successfully given before the court at the dedication of the Orphanage Church. La finta semplice was given the following year, 1769, in the archbishop’s palace in Salzburg. In October Mozart was appointed an honorary Konzertmeister at the Salzburg court.

Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (Petr Il'ich Chaikovskii), Russian composer.
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Still only 13, Mozart had by now acquired considerable fluency in the musical language of his time, and he was especially adept at imitating the musical equivalent of local dialects. The early Paris and London sonatas, the autographs of which include Leopold’s helping hand, show a childlike pleasure in patterns of notes and textures. But the London and The Hague symphonies attest to his quick and inventive response to the music he had encountered, as, with their enrichment of texture and fuller development, do those he produced in Vienna (such as K 43 and, especially, K 48). And his first Italian opera shows a ready grasp of the buffo style.