Christopher Webber to Denis Fodor:

>>Our age has made available to us new media to further more effectively
>>than can opera a revolutionary cause.
>
>Such as?  Music still has incalculable power to at least ferment emotion
>and thought, throughout the world.

I agree. Or to be honest, I desperately want to agree.

>What is abundantly clear is that a work as socially and humanly disruptive
>as "The Marriage of Figaro" should never have been allowed to become
>anodyne: only the minuscule size of the classic repertory, and its
>consequent over-familiarity, have allowed it to dwindle so.

I agree with the general of this message. But In my opinion "Marriage
of Figaro" has always been a bit more anodyne and a little less disruptive
than Christoper thinks it. Over-familiarity has little to do with this.
It's just a comedy, and all the "socially disruptive" situations in it
belongs to a long tradition that allowed them in Plautus' comedies.
Beaumarchais' play was seen as "dangerous" just at a precise historical
moment (no more than two decades). The prestige derived from this has
been estimated (better: overestimated) only in recent years. Since
Beethoven, who considered the libretto just as a frivolous stupidity,
to us, "Marriage..." is as socially disruptive as Moliere's "Le medecin
malgre lui" could be.

Pablo Massa
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