Figaro is getting a divorce
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| Title: | Figaro is getting a divorce |
| Genus: | comedy |
| Original language: | German |
| Author: | Ödön from Horváth |
| Literary source: | The great day or Figaro's wedding |
| Publishing year: | 1937 |
| Premiere: | April 2, 1937 |
| Place of premiere: | German Theater Prague |
| Place and time of the action: | some time after Figaro's wedding |
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Figaro is divorced is a comedy in three acts and nine pictures by Ödön von Horváth . The play was premiered on April 2, 1937 in Prague . The main characters are the same as in Beaumarchais ' comedy The Great Day or Figaro's Wedding or as in Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro .
content
The story takes place at the time of "the Revolution", probably the French, but the plot is also to be seen in the context of the contemporary problem of National Socialism: Horváth describes the fate of the individual and his adaptation to society and warns against giving up human values.
The play begins with Count Almavivas, his wife, Figaros and his wife Susanne fleeing the revolution. They manage to escape; they live as emigrants. The count does not get along with it at all; he does not want to forego his luxury and affords it, although he has no income to show. Predictably, financial ruin and social decline follow; the count ends up in prison as a cheater. In contrast to the Count, Figaro knows what to expect and how to help himself. He goes into business for himself with a hairdresser in a provincial town. He is recognized by his craft, but it is less based on his skills and more on the fact that he talks as the customers like it. For his wife Susanne he has become a hypocritical philistine who wants to please everyone except her, because he denies her the child she has longed for and gives the "uncertain" future as a reason. Susanne betrays Figaro in her dissatisfaction with a customer. The marriage breaks up at this affair and Susanne goes back to the Almavivas. Figaro has to go out of business as he is losing all of his customers to people talking. Susanne has now found work as a waitress in an “emigrant café”; However, when her work permit expires, she goes back to her home country and back to Figaro, together with the count, whose wife has died. In the meantime, he has become the administrator of the Count's former property, which now houses a children's home. The two spouses find each other again.
Roll inventory
Figaro
Figaro is basically the only one who can cope with the new situation (the revolution). He knows his trade and knows what he has to offer people in order to win them over. So his business is pretty successful too, and that's because he knows how to deal with people - he just tells them what they want to hear. Figaro can judge his fellow men well and thus reacts to them in the right way. However, because he is so busy with other people, he loses sight of his wife and her needs and desires.
Susanne
Like Figaro, Susanne is employed by the count as the countess's maid. So you can say that she has similar interests to Figaro, after all, the two have almost the same profession. Susanne wants nothing more than a child from her husband, but he is not ready to grant her heart's desire. Susanne despairs and doesn't know what to do next. Although she is a loyal soul, she can no longer bear the fact that her husband no longer pays her any attention and eventually cheats on him. It seems that she did not act out of defiance, rather out of desperation and because her husband is no longer the one she once loved and - as she asserts - actually still loves.
Count Almaviva
The Count cannot cope with the new situation at all. He doesn't know how to live modestly and doesn't want to try, since he gives himself up to the illusion that the revolution is only a brief interlude. So it happens that financially he whistles out of the last hole and begins to cheat in order to have at least something to live on. You can tell how overwhelmed the Count is and that he cannot help himself, and he is too proud to ask someone (Figaro) for help.
Meaning and effect
The amusing play, which premiered in the New German Theater in Prague, is not one of Horváth's most important plays, but was published in numerous editions as the author was rediscovered and has been translated into various languages. In addition, there is an arrangement for the music theater by the composer Giselher Klebe and a TV version with Helmuth Lohner as Count Almaviva (1999). Horváth's original manuscript is kept in the literary archive of the Austrian National Library.