By Michael Billington [Guardian, 6 January 2006]
Pity the poor dramatist whose work becomes a successful opera. Unless he is Shakespeare or Schiller, he will usually find that he is simply regarded as source material. So it is with Beaumarchais whose twin masterpieces, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, are rarely seen outside France and have been largely superseded by the more famous operas. But, with new productions of both Rossini’s Barber and Mozart’s Figaro at Covent Garden, it is high time we re-examined, and revived, the revolutionary writer who inspired them.
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The Guardian on Beaumarchais
By Michael Billington [Guardian, 6 January 2006]
Pity the poor dramatist whose work becomes a successful opera. Unless he is Shakespeare or Schiller, he will usually find that he is simply regarded as source material. So it is with Beaumarchais whose twin masterpieces, The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, are rarely seen outside France and have been largely superseded by the more famous operas. But, with new productions of both Rossini’s Barber and Mozart’s Figaro at Covent Garden, it is high time we re-examined, and revived, the revolutionary writer who inspired them.
Click here for remainder of article.
image=http://www.operatoday.com/content/Beaumarchais_medium.jpg
image_description=Beaumarchais