We the Italians June 13, 2014 - 34 | Página 5

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Apart from the content, the opera is revolutionary also because the character of the Quaker sings in every possible style, showing through the music he is to be able to navigate among various social roles, with a very rare freedom of movement in opera. At that time the servant normally had to sing in a low style and the master in a high style. So, as I said, although without a direct reference to the American revolutionary movements, even then America was seen as something completely different and innovative compared to European conventions.

This is all very interesting, a kind of "American Dream" before its time. Is there a story or a character particularly important for the Italians who then described America?

The actor Francesco Benucci played more or less the same character in a number of different operas, playing the role of the Quaker Naimur in L’americana in Olanda, the role of Leporello in Mozart's Don Giovanni and the role of Figaro in Le nozze di Figaro. This actor was clearly a key figure in the dissemination of ideas that, if not revolutionary, were at least quite subversive.

What I intend to suggest about how America was studied and then described, -directly or indirectly, is that the conception of Le nozze di Figaro by Mozart is based on the American Revolution. It was written three years before the French Revolution, and has been read by all as a prophecy of the French Revolution, but this is absurd. The literary source is Le Mariage de Figaro by Beaumarchais, written in 1778 in France. At that time, Beaumarchais himself acted as a secret agent for the American Revolution, not only smuggling weapons but also writing an incendiary pamphlet (Observations sur le justificatif mémoire de la Cour de Londres, 1779) in which he was precisely speaking about the ideas of the American Revolution, even translating parts of the Declaration of Independence.

So in this opera America is represented as a source of revolutionary news in a symbolic way. The entire opera is based on the Ius Primae Noctis, the supposed right that the Master had to deflower the bride on the first night of marriage. In the opera,a couple of servants, Figaro and Susanna, decide to get married. There is alsoa Count who falls in love with Susanna and wants to sleep with her on the basis of this alleged right. In this case Figaro - as I said before, played by Benucci, who had already previously played an American Quaker who threatened a Count with a gun - appears on the scene and stops the plan of the unjust Master. Actually, the law of the Ius Primae Noctis never existed. It is a false history concocted in the Enlightenment years.