Beaumarchais in Seville: An Intermezzo - Hardcover

Thomas, Hugh

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0300121032 ISBN 13: 9780300121032

Publisher: Yale University Press, 2007

Synopsis

In 1764-65 the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais traveled to Madrid, where he immersed himself in the life and society of the day. Inspired by the places he had seen and the people he had met, Beaumarchais returned home to create The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, plays that became the basis for the operas by Rossini and Mozart that continue to delight audiences today. This book is a lively and original account of Beaumarchais’s visit to Madrid (he never went to Seville) and a re-creation of the society that fired his imagination.
Drawing on Beaumarchais’s letters and commentaries, translated into English for the first time, Hugh Thomas investigates the full range of the playwright’s activities in Madrid. He focuses particular attention on short plays that Beaumarchais attended and by which he was probably influenced, and he probes the inspirations for such widely recognized characters as the barber-valet Figaro, the lordly Count Almaviva, and the beautiful but deceived Rosine. Not neglecting Beaumarchais’s many other pursuits (ranging from an endeavor to gain a contract for selling African slaves to an attempt to place his mistress as a spy in the bed of King Charles III), Lord Thomas provides a highly entertaining view of a vital moment in Madrid’s history and in the creative life of the energetic Beaumarchais.

About this title

About the Author

Hugh Thomas is a member of the House of Lords in London and the author of numerous books on the history of the Spanish world. He lives in London.

Review

"Hugh Thomas's joyous, elegant and stylish Beaumarchais in Seville shows how much fun history can be."—Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.

(Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.)

"An enchanting and instructive book, full of historical and critical sensitivity. Thomas succeeds in one of the hardest tasks in literary criticism: linking creative output to the author’s own life story."—Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Tufts University

(Felipe Fernandez-Armesto)

"Grimy streets, grim politics, greedy aristos, grasping parvenues, a grand guignol. Hugh Thomas's disciplined imagination conjures vividly Beaumarchais' world and mind."—Felipe Fernandez-Armesto, Tufts University

(Felipe Fernandez-Armesto)

"Beaumarchais' Spanish adventure is related with wit and high spirits by the distinguished historian Hugh Thomas: Mozart would surely have loved to set the whole episode, as here described, to music."—Antonia Fraser, author of Marie Antoinette: The Journey (Antonia Fraser)

"Hugh Thomas has written a brief, witty and enlightening account of the origins of those two key works: The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro. He brings to life Beaumarchais in the glittering epoch of profound frivolity before the French Revolution ruined all."—Paul Johnson (Paul Johnson)

"A famous watchmaker's progress? How to fix an unfaithful lover? A ravishing picture of mid-18th century Madrid? A foretaste of The Marriage of Figaro? All of these, and immensely enjoyable."—Brian Urquhart, Former Under Secretary General of the United Nations (Brian Urquhart)

About this edition

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 2007
• ISBN 10: 0300121032
• ISBN 13: 9780300121032
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 192