comedies of his great French prototype and which,
while it made their acceptance tardy, because of royal and courtly
opposition, made their popular triumph the more emphatic. "Le Nozze di
Figaro" gave us more than one figure and more than one scene in the
representation, and "Le Nozze di Figaro" is to those who understand its
text one of the most questionable operas on the current list. But there
is a moral purpose underlying the comedy which to some extent justifies
its frank salaciousness. It is to prevent the Count from exercising an
ancient seigniorial right over the heroine which he had voluntarily
resigned, that all the characters in the play unite in the intrigue
which makes up the comedy. Moreover, there are glimpses over and over
again of honest and virtuous love between the characters and beautiful
expressions of it in the music which makes the play delightful, despite
its salaciousness. Even Cherubino who seems to have come to life again
in Octavian, is a lovable youth if for no othe reason than that he
represents youth in its amorousness toward all womankind, with thought
of special mischief toward none.

"Der Rosenkavalier" is a comedy of lubricity merely, with what little
satirical scourge it has applied only to an old roue who is no more
deserving of it than most of the other people in the play. So much of
its story as will bear telling can be told very briefly. It begins,
assuming its instrumental introduction (played with the scene
discreetly hidden) to be a part of it, with a young nobleman locked in
the embraces of the middle-aged wife of a field marshal, who is
conveniently absent on a hunting expedition. The music is of a
passionate order, and the composer, seeking a little the odor of
virtue, but with an oracular wink in his eye, says in a descriptive
note that it is to be played in the spirit of parody (parodistisch).
Unfortunately the audience cannot see the printed direction, and there
is no parody in music except extravagance and ineptitude in the
utterance of simple things (like the faulty notes of the horns in
Mozart's joke on the village musicians, the cadenza for violin solo in
the same musical joke, or the twangling of Beckmesser's lute); so the
introduction is an honest musical description of things which the
composer is not willing to confess, and least of all the stage manager,
for when the curtain opens there is not presented even the picture
called for by the German libretto. Neverth