which blocked the progress of the comedies on which they are
founded, because Da Ponte, who wrote the book for Mozart, and
Sterbini, who was Rossini's librettist, judiciously and deftly
elided the objectionable political element. "Le Nozze" is by far the
more ingeniously constructed play of the two (though a trifle too
involved for popular comprehension in the original language), but
"Il Barbiere" has the advantage of freedom from the moral grossness
which pollutes its companion. For the unspoiled taste of the better
class of opera patrons, there is a livelier as well as a lovelier
charm in the story of Almaviva's adventures while outwitting Dr.
Bartolo and carrying off the winsome Rosina to be his countess
than in the depiction of his amatory intrigues after marriage.
In fact, there is something especially repellent in the Count's
lustful pursuit of the bride of the man to whose intellectual
resourcefulness he owed the successful outcome of his own wooing.

It is, indeed, a fortunate thing for Mozart's music that so few
opera-goers understand Italian nowadays. The play is a moral
blister, and the less intelligible it is made by excisions in its
dialogue, the better, in one respect, for the virtuous sensibilities
of its auditors. One point which can be sacrificed without detriment
to the music and at only a trifling cost to the comedy (even when it
is looked upon from the viewpoint which prevailed in Europe at the
period of its creation) is that which Beaumarchais relied on chiefly
to add piquancy to the conduct of the Count. Almaviva, we are given
to understand, on his marriage with Rosina had voluntarily abandoned
an ancient seignorial right, described by Susanna as "certe mezz'
ore che il diritto feudale," but is desirous of reviving the
practice in the case of the Countess's bewitching maid on the eve of
her marriage to his valet. It is this discovery which induces Figaro