The Marriage of Figaro - Musical Style

Musical Style

  • In spite of all the sorrow, anxiety, and anger the characters experience, only one number is in a minor key: Barbarina's brief aria L'ho perduta at the beginning of act 4, where she mourns the loss of the pin and worries about what her master will say when she fails to deliver it, is written in F minor. Other than this, the entire opera is set in major keys except the opening few bars of the duet between Susanna and the Count at the beginning of act 3 ("Crudel, perché finora") which are in the key of A minor; the duet then quickly modulate via C major to A major.
  • Mozart uses the sound of two horns playing together to represent cuckoldry, in the act 4 aria "Aprite un po quelli'ochi". Verdi later used the same device in Ford's aria in Falstaff.

Read more about this topic:  The Marriage Of Figaro

Famous quotes containing the words musical and/or style:

    A pregnant woman and her spouse dream of three babies—the perfect four-month-old who rewards them with smiles and musical cooing, the impaired baby, who changes each day, and the mysterious real baby whose presence is beginning to be evident in the motions of the fetus.
    T. Berry Brazelton (20th century)

    We think it is the richest prose style we know of.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)