As I read the program’s synopsis of Opera Modesto’s production of The Marriage of Figaro in my seat in the Gallo Center, waiting for Annalisa Winberg and her husband Roy Stevens to welcome everyone (by encouraging us to yell “bravo!” and “brava!” and “bravissimo!” like they do in Italy), I learned something very interesting: The Marriage of Figaro is actually the sequel to The Barber of Seville.
That is, both operas are based on plays by the French playwright Pierre Caron de Beaumarchais. In fact, both are part of a trilogy which ends with a play called The Guilty Mother. However, The Guilty Mother did not draw the interest of turn of the eighteenth century opera composers the way it did with Rossini and Mozart – until 1966 when the Frenchman Darius Milhaud wrote music and his wife Madeleine Milhaud wrote the libretto. (The most recent production I could find was something obscure in 2017 in New York City.)…