Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro)
by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

In 1975, the British rock band the Sex Pistols released a song called "God Saved the Queen" - and caused such a controversy that the group wound up virtually banned in their own country. The song suggested that England had no future as long as the monarchy was allowed to continue, and the very notion of a bunch of lower class youths promoting such a theory was too much for most folks to take. Now, we're not trying to single out England; the fact is that the upper class has been lording over the lower class ever since…well ever since rich people had more money than poor people. That is, forever! But, occasionally, the lower classes get the upper hand.

Of course, this is not a new phenomenon - sociologically or musically. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had a similar problem with one of his operas. At first encounter, Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro might be heard as a beautiful but lightweight frolic. Its libretto could be read as a breezy marital farce, or at its deepest, a moralistic story of class struggle - telling about a boorish nobleman who "gets his" from a couple of clever domestics - not to mention his own wife.

But Mozart was seldom satisfied with theater at that level. And a closer look reveals Figaro as an opera of astonishing depth. The opera does have moments of straightforward comedy, and the libretto does relate a simple, plainly symbolic conflict between aristocrats and commoners. But Mozart's music explores the true core of the opera's drama -- a depth and sincerity of feeling that doesn't distinguish between nobleman and servant; emotions that, in the end, leave all of the opera's disparate characters at the same, all too human level.

Of course, this didn't sit all that well with the aristocrats who were paying for Mozart's opera - they thought the whole thing was a tad subversive. So, this week At the Opera, host Lou Santacroce explores class struggle - the age-old issue that Mozart's opera re-ignited in 18th-century Vienna - with sociologist John Macionis. Lou also consults Dr. J. Patrick Lee, At the Opera's resident expert on French literature, about the Beaumarchais play that caused the whole "Figaro Controversy" in the first place. And, attorney Don Franzen tells us how Figaro's legal problems might have shaken out in a 20th-century courtroom.

That's all At the Opera, half-an-hour before the METROPOLITAN OPERA's Christmas Day performance of Mozart's masterpiece.

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