Four Itchy Feet

November 15, 2025. Washington, DC.

This evening we returned to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts for Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro. We arrived early for a one-hour talk on the opera’s history and an insight into both Mozart and Lorenzo Da Ponte, the librettist. The speaker masterfully took us back to a theater in Vienna on May 1, 1786. He detailed what it must have felt like to attend the theater that night, including the sounds and the culture surrounding the performance. Within those details, he included hidden plots and musical themes to watch out for during the upcoming performance.

We were in for a special treat as the performance was entrusted to the Washington National Opera’s Cafritz Young Artists. These are a group of young rising stars on the opera scene who, once a year, enact the entire opera in front of a full house. These were not amateurs, I tell you; they acted and sang as the most accomplished opera actors and singers we have ever seen.

The Marriage of Figaro is a comedic opera, which means nobody has to die in the end! Its music, written by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and its libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, follows the events of a single chaotic day at Count Almaviva’s estate near Seville. The plot centers on the upcoming marriage of the Count’s valet, Figaro, and the Countess’s maid, Susanna, a union the Count attempts to sabotage because he desires Susanna for himself. Through a series of witty deceptions, disguises, and mistaken identities, Figaro and Susanna, aided by the melancholic Countess and the page Cherubino, constantly try to outsmart the Count’s schemes to claim his feudal right, the droit du seigneur. The action is further complicated by multiple subplots involving old debts, unexpected parentage revelations, and various romantic entanglements among the secondary characters. Ultimately, the Count is tricked into admitting his wrongdoing and begging the Countess’s forgiveness, leading to the triumphant conclusion of Figaro and Susanna’s marriage.

We left the theater enriched by the music and with a serious case of facial fatigue from laughing so hard during the nearly three-hour performance. The Marriage of Figaro must be on your must-see operas; it is truly enjoyable and a great start to your operatic journey in case you haven’t begun one.