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.

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