The Marriage of Figaro

Two servants must outmaneuver the nobleman of the house before they can marry.

Listen: Synopsis for The Marriage of Figaro

• ACT I

  
  At a magnificent, newly constructed estate, the valet Figaro and his fiancée, the maid Susanna, prepare for their wedding. But Susanna shocks Figaro by revealing that the head of the household, Count Almaviva, plans to seduce her. In another part of the new house, a lawyer, Dr. Bartolo, vows vengeance against Figaro for a long-held grudge. His companion, the housekeeper Marcellina, wants Figaro to marry her to cancel a loan he cannot repay. Count Almaviva barges in, furious at having caught his young page Cherubino flirting with the gardener’s daughter, Barbarina. The Count’s attentions, however, shift when he sees Susanna—only to snap back again when he discovers his flirtatious page hiding in the same room. Hoping to derail the Count’s designs on Susanna, Figaro pressures him to hold their wedding that very day. The Count reluctantly agrees, but he takes his anger out on the page Cherubino, banishing him to the military.

• ACT II

  
  The Countess Rosina plots to chasten her husband’s infidelity, with assistance from Figaro and Susanna. Cherubino, smitten with the Countess, agrees to help. The two women disguise Cherubino as Susanna, in order to lure the Count into a romantic tryst. Susanna leaves to find a ribbon for the disguise, only for the Count himself to arrive. Cherubino quickly hides in a closet. The Count, however, hears noise coming from the closet and doubts the Countess’s claim that Susanna is inside. He takes his wife to fetch tools with which to open the locked closet. Meanwhile, Susanna, having observed everything, urges Cherubino to come out. Cherubino leaps from the window to escape, and Susanna takes his place in the closet. Both Almaviva and Rosina are amazed to find her there upon their return. All seems well until the gardener storms in with crushed geraniums from the flower bed below the window. Figaro, who has run in to announce that the wedding is ready, contends it was he who jumped from the window and feigns a sprained ankle. Marcellina, Bartolo, and the music teacher Basilio enter waving a court summons for Figaro, which allows the lecherous Count to delay the wedding.

• ACT III

  
  As everyone assembles for Figaro’s hearing, Barbarina dresses the banished Cherubino as a girl to hide him from the Count. The trial concludes with Figaro sentenced to marry Marcellina—unless he pays off his debt.
  
  They soon discover, however, that Figaro is actually the love child of Dr. Bartolo and Marcellina herself. Susanna enters with money to resolve Figaro’s debt, and the two couples marry in a double wedding. Susanna, having plotted with the Countess to trap her cheating husband, slips the Count a note. It summons him to the garden that evening. They seal it with a pin which the Count is to return to Susanna.

• ACT IV

  
  Later that night, Barbarina has dropped the pin that the Count asked her to return to Susanna. Hearing this, Figaro believes the pin to be a token of love and that Susanna has betrayed him. Susanna and the Countess arrive in disguise, having swapped clothes to deceive the Count. Susanna conceals herself in the bushes, while the Count chases away Cherubino to have the woman he assumes to be Susanna all to himself. A jealous Figaro attempts to enlist the aid of the supposed Countess, but he quickly realizes from her voice that she is, in fact, Susanna. The Count, having lost the fake Susanna, re-enters to see Figaro performing an exaggerated love scene with the woman he believes to be his wife. Thinking the Countess has betrayed him, the Count furiously calls everyone to witness her disgrace. He refuses all pleas for pardon, until the real Rosina appears and the ruse is revealed. Grasping the truth at last, the Count begs his wife’s forgiveness. She agrees, and the entire household celebrates the dawning of an era of hope and possibility in their new home.