to invent his scheme for expediting the wedding, and lends a touch
of humor to the scene in which Figaro asks that he and his bride
enjoy the first-fruits of the reform while the villagers lustily
hymn the merits of their "virtuous" lord; but the too frank
discussion of the subject with which the dialogue teems might easily
be avoided. The opera, like all the old works of the lyrical stage,
is in sad need of intelligent revision and thorough study, so that
its dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved. There
is no lovelier merit in Mozart's music than the depth and tenderness
with which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess
for her lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile
passion of the adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant,
vivacious spirit of the plotters are also given voice. Mozart's
music could not be all that it is if it did not enter fully and
unreservedly into the spirit of the comedy; it is what it is because
whenever the opportunity presented itself, he raised it into the
realm of the ideal. Yet Mozart was no Puritan. He swam along gayly
and contentedly on the careless current of life as it was lived
in Vienna and elsewhere in the closing decades of the eighteenth
century, and was not averse, merely for the fun of the thing, to go
even a step beyond his librettist when the chance offered. Here is
an instance in point: The plotters have been working a little at
cross-purposes, each seeking his own advantages, and their plans are
about to be put to the test when Figaro temporarily loses confidence
in the honesty of Susanna. With his trust in her falls to the ground
his faith in all woman-kind. He rails against the whole sex in the
air, beginning: "Aprite un po' quegl' occhi?" in the last act.
Enumerating the moral blemishes of women, he at length seems to be
fairly choked by his own spleen, and bursts out at the end with
"Il resto nol dico, gia ognuno lo sa" ("The rest I'll not tell