L.A. Opera's Figaro Unbound: Visual Art in the Time of Figaro

L.A. Opera's Figaro Unbound: Visual Art in the Time of Figaro
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From February 7 through April 12, 2015, LA Opera will produce three operas inspired by the works of the French playwright Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799). Beaumarchais was a man of many talents: a playwright, watchmaker, inventor, musician, diplomat, fugitive, spy, publisher, horticulturalist, arms dealer, satirist, financier and revolutionary (both French and American). His trilogy of Figaro plays—The Barber of Seville (1775), The Marriage of Figaro (1784) and The Guilty Mother (1792)—captured staggering changes in social attitudes of the late 18th century. These plays and their characters have been subsequently adapted into operas (some more successful than others) by Paisiello, Salieri, Massenet and Milhaud, to name a few.

During the 2014/15 season, LA Opera presents the Figaro Trilogy—John Corigliano's The Ghosts of Versailles, Rossini's The Barber of Seville and Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro—immersing audiences in the world of Figaro, a fictional character who created a sensation in the years leading up to the French Revolution.

LACMA’s collection includes three important works from this period that are infused with the revolutionary spirit. These three artworks – a sculpture and two paintings – taken together represent artists' responses to the events of French Revolution, paralleling the spirit of the Figaro trilogy.