Beaumarchais

Summary

Dominique Pagani approaches Beaumarchais almost always through The Marriage of Figaro. He stresses that it is the first play in which the maidservant, Suzanne, becomes a heroine in her own right12. In his view, its main subject is the droit du seigneur, treated in a revolutionary mood, and the play makes aristocrats applaud the ruin of their own privileges34. He returns several times to Figaro's line that making love at any time is what distinguishes man from the beasts56. He also quotes the phrase "Everything ends with songs"78. He recalls that Beaumarchais created Cherubino and that Count Almaviva transgresses puritanism as he pleases, a reading he connects to Clouscard and the ideology of desire. He places him among the figures of the age of libertinism and presents him as an adventurer-writer, an example of the new bourgeoisie. In connection with Nerval, he mentions a sceptical Beaumarchais who attributes the Prussian retreat from Verdun to a phantasmagoria staged by the actor Fleury.

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2. 2#5.1 bis Questions (Facebook Live)2 Nov 2018 · 51:01
3. 3Money, work, freedom3 Aug 2019 · 33:15
4. 4#13 Mozart restored2 Feb 2021 · 1:04:57
5. 5#2 Harnessed to confinitude30 Mar 2020 · 44:26
6. 6A springtime of the peoples?18 Mar 2023 · 1:07:41
7. 7#9 Pictures at an Exhibition: art, seen from here or from the other side?10 Feb 2022 · 58:58
8. 8Worldliness in Clouscard: the clash of worlds?9 Jul 2023 · 2:05:38

Summary produced automatically from 13 of the passages below, to be reviewed; the numbers link to the moment in the session.