The tender pulse of pardon - redemption and forgiveness in The Marriage of Figaro
There are many final scenes in opera that move and shake me most deeply.
Waltraute confronts Brunnhilde, 1910, Athur Rackham
In Die Walküre in May 2018 in Leipzig, I sat spellbound as the tender and ever-protective Brünnhilde longed for her father’s forgiveness. Wotan, despite her words, moved by his daughter’s endearments, still had to punish his celestial child — she had betrayed him, gone astray, gone against his wishes. As the strings swelled around this scene, he announced her punishment: to be surrounded in a mountain of fire until the arrival of a man brave enough to rescue her.
And then there is the ending of La Boheme where the music drops and the leads are left — of all things - to speak. After nearly two hours of beautiful singing, the naked human voice creeps over the scene in a stark and uncanny fashion.
It is this starkness that sets the stage for the remainder of the act, one where this group of Bohemian friends realize that their frail and darling Mimi has silently perished in their midst, taken by the consumption she has suffered from throughout the opera. The strings rush into the final seconds like a mournful flood. Rudolfo, her lover left kneeling at her side, screams her name in an operatic cry of agony and gut-wrenching desperation.
While these two examples are tearful and sorrowful, looming and alive with loss, built up with the power of music, the end of The Marriage of Figaro (Le nozze di Figaro) offers something else entirely.
An antiquated art form?
Before I continue, let me stress: opera, yes, opera, I understand, is not for everyone.
For a German friend of mine, the musical art form is no more than classical music with screaming voices. Fair enough, I told her. For many of my former students, it is antiquated with performances being far too long. Fair enough, again. Puccini clocks in at under two hours, while Wagner can be fiendish with four. I get it. You don’t have to tell me.
And even for me… me, opera, I will admit, is not always palatable and perfect. Despite their lengths, many opera stories often border on the implausible and ludicrous. The same goes for the performances: singers often rush about the stage like amateur actors, over-doing gestures in a wailing and ever-embarrassing fashion that would put high school drama students to shame.
So, yes, I will admit, not a perfect kind of art for all. I get it.
Still, the music, the music and the complementary singing must come first in my mind. And just as I suspend belief concerning the laws of physics in the latest Fast and the Furious installment (they are such fun films), I remind myself to suspend my belief here, too. To forgive the clunky aspects of one of my favourite art forms, I focus on the music.
And with some operas, I focus on the philosophy.
Philosophically-minded composers
Many opera aficionados know that Richard Wagner anchored his mature works in the philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer and his seminal two volume tome, The World as Will and Representation. Wagner’s mature operas are essentially the philosopher’s world set to music. It is heady and heavy stuff, boasting gods and goddesses and mythological loves and losses along with the themes of liebestod (love death) and other themes of resignation and compassion.
Portrait of Arthur Schopenhauer, 1815, Ludwig Sigismund Ruhl - Frankurt University Library - the famed philosopher was a notable influence on numerous artists throughout the mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century.
Yet many forget that in Mozart’s world too, under the ribbons and barrels of Baroque lace, amidst the masquerade, the sometime gods and heroes, the Shakespearean swapped identities, there is also a lovely and life-enhancing philosophy — one of forgiveness.
‘Pardon is indeed the dramatic motive of Mozart’s operas’ states Peter Conrad in his work on opera, A song of love and death. ‘Music is a mollifying and tempering force.’
Musical clemency, one might suggest. And indeed, the philosophy of clemency or pardon appears in several Mozart operas.
For example: two Spanish lovers attempt to break their ladies free from a harem in Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Escape from the Seraglio). They are caught in the act. The gloating chief of security is eager for their blood but no, not going to happen: his boss, the benevolent ruler, a Pasha in a non-singing role offers the two couples pardon.
Off you go. Safe trip home now. Curtain.
In another more classical style opera, Idomeneo, the god Neptune (an off-stage voice) grants the son of the eponymous character reprieve at the last minute. The father is to step down as king, the deity demands, and he is to allow the son to get married and rule. So, basically… forgiveness.
Off you go, happy ending now. Curtain.
In Così fan tutte, a controversial and more complex piece, the two girls are forgiven for basically committing adultery. They allowed themselves to be seduced by two Albanians — played by their Neapolitan lovers in disguise and wooing each other’s belle. However, it was Don Alfonso, an Iago-like philosopher-manipulator, who made them so vulnerable to deceit. The ornery Don admits to the folly and bids the lovers to join hands and say their vows.
Off you go, married and be merry now. Curtain.
Yet my favourite scene of forgiveness occurs at the end of Figaro.
“Immortal Mozart! You to whom I owe everything … you to whom I owe that I did not go through life without encountering something that could shake me...”
Le Nozzi di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) - Exploring forgiveness in music
Server on a smoke break, Vienna, Summer 2016 - would a modern day Mozart compose an opera around such a soul?
The Marriage of Figaro (De Nozze di Figaro) takes place in Seville in the seventeenth century, with the story centering around the titular servant, an every man. Engaged to wed his darling Susanna, a maid, he work together with his bride-to-be at the residence of their employers, Count Almaviva, a Spanish nobleman and his long-suffering wife, the Countess Rosina.
The opera takes places in a single day, and what a day! In the beginning, we learn that the Count is randy and raring for Susanna, that a devious and desperate woman wants Figaro to repay a debt or marry her and the Countess is lonely, longing for the past. Then there’s Cherubino, a horny little page in the Count’s employ. The boy irks his boss and must be sent off to the army. In the first act, all is not well in the best of all possible worlds.
As one might expect, things are resolved in due course in fun and — at times - in implausible ways (ahem, opera here). But to describe and explain the movement of the plot, as it rushes between the two polar opposite figures of jolly Figaro and his irritable boss, the Count would be far more difficult. Let us say, Figaro longs to solve everything, to make things good for himself and others while the Count steams and curses and, with clenched fists, barks frustrated at his servants and wife’s attempt at foiling his revenge on life and others. Like the page, he is horny (Susanna!) but unlike Figaro, he has no Joie de vivre, no naive pleasure in life. While Figaro is playful and helpful, the frowning Count is hell-bent on enacting ruin. He roars about envious and distrustful.
Yet the great layer of compassionate tenderness is not fully revealed until the final scene. Here, after all the main plot points are resolved, we still need the Countess to find happiness. But there is an operatic plan in the works: Susanna and the Countess have switched outfits, in other words, roles. The lady is now wearing the wardrobe of the help, while the maid is donning the get-up of her mistress.
In this act, they wait in the garden, hoping to fool the Count into falling back in love with his wife. (Again, opera.) And with the music, and all the comings and goings of other characters to lend confusion to the whole thing, we gradually begin to arrive at the loveliest moment in the opera.
Naturally, Figaro gets wind of all this and has his fun. At one point, the Count spies Figaro wooing ‘the Countess’ (here Susanna) and charges in, calling for men, guards and the like. All’armi, all’armi! (To arms, to arms!) The Count believes he is being betrayed. Friends and his advisors stream out into the scene. Everyone looks on in shock and confusion. The Count calls Susanna (thinking she is his wife) an adulteress or la perfida — ‘the treacherous one.’
Susanna in reply, while holding up a handkerchief, begs for forgiveness in the role of the Countess. ‘Forgive me.’ No non, nonsperarlo, (‘No never, I won’t!’) the maddened man barks, hands thrown up into air.
Figaro, knowing Susanna is dressed as the Countess, begs for his wife to be forgiven. Enough is enough. Perdono, perdono! The Count refuses (again, he still thinks this is his real life wife carelessly messing around with his servant). The others endear him, beg him to forgive this ‘Countess’. ‘No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.’ (A bit exaggerated, I will admit).
Only then, amidst the heated, fuming words of her husband’s temper, does the Countess emerge from the arbor where she has been hiding and asks him to forgive them. She starts to kneel herself.
Ashamed of himself, now spying the ring she was wearing in the role of ‘Susanna’ he realizes he had been earlier trying to seduce his own wife. He prevents The Countess from kneeling and, instead, takes a knee himself.
Alone, in this vulnerable moment, in a tone of raw and naked supplication, he sings Contessa, perdona! ‘My lady, forgive me.’
Les Plaisirs du Bal (Pleasures of the Ball), 1717, Antoine Watteau - Dulwich Picture Gallery London - Watteau might be considered the pictorial compliment to Mozart’s music, evoking the fleeting joys of life in his wistful, dreamlike paintings of the aristocracy in the 18th century.
Reverent catharsis
Posthumous painting of Mozart, 1819, Barbara Krafft - perhaps the most famous image of the composer is a rendering done over twenty-five years following his death
The reason this scene moves me, shakes me, is that it boasts a philosophy of forgiveness rarely spoken of. The Countess first asks her husband to forgive. In his contrition, he in turn asks for forgiveness.
Throughout the opera, the Count’s anger is not only blinding but a destructive emotion for him to carry. He blames others for his frustration, for his lack, and he darkens the world of his perceptions by misinterpreting the experience of his life and the lives of others
On the one level, the Count is an antagonist, a ruling party pooper. Yet he is more than comic fodder. Mozart knew this. We feel pathos for the short-sided man. This character blindly spends the entire opera in this mire of anger and longing, conspiring to pain and manipulate, to wrongfully seduce another man’s wife. He has no regard for his actions, no awareness of what his intentions might entail; from a limited perception based upon his own righteous self-justification, he is attempting to undermine the order and happiness of the day. Towards the end of the opera, the veil begins to life for the Count, and he soon has eyes to see.
Mozart used music to characterize both the roles on the stage and their emotions. For much of Figaro, the Count’s music, for lack of a better word, is cloudy and brooding. He is characterized by sulking, authoritarian music. There is a pall in the moments he expresses himself.
Yet when he awakens to his selfish intention, when he lowers himself below his wife, kneeling, singing ‘perdona’, those dark musical clouds beatifically lift and part and the sweet tenderness previously granted to the other characters is now granted to him like a balm of healing.
The strings surround him, now he is celestially lighter and less heavy than before. In his asking for forgiveness, the audience understands through the music this unloading of his anger, his distrust and envy.
Applications on my healing journey
In learning to heal in my own life, I can relate to such a musical scene. Anger stems from raw dissatisfaction and like the grim Count I know in my youth, I reduced the world to a raw experience of blame, envy and resentment. (This anger in large part led to the onset of the ulcerative colitis in my life.)
I believe this music best embodies the releasing shift from anger and resentment to letting go. To forgive is to grant grace, to bid for peace, but to ask for forgiveness is to acknowledge one’s own burning blindness. I once participated blindly in my anger, but I had to inevitably participate in my redemption, and this meant both becoming aware of my trespasses while asking for pardon from many people in my life.
This dissolving of inner and maniacal darkness is something I have learned from Mozart. It is something I return to, as do many audiences. There is healing in this final act. The audiences too are redeemed following the Countess’s words of yes, I will forgive you.
It is something we sense as the characters sing that their day of folly and madness is at an end. Solo amor può terminar. ‘Only love can be the answer.’ They join hands. Corriam tutti a festiggiar. ‘Let’s run off and celebrate.’ They smile, the Count included, beaming joyfully as if for the first time.
And off they go.
Curtain.
“Pardon is indeed the dramatic motive of Mozart’s operas.... music is a mollifying element...”
L’Embarquement pour Cythere (The Embarkation for Cythera), 1717, Antoine Watteau - Louvre, Paris - love coming and going, beginning and ending