Lorenzo Da Ponte, librettist of the Le nozze di Figaro, had to replace the speech with which Figaro concludes his critique of nobility in an aria directed against the infidelity of women –«Aprite un po’ quegli occhi»– so that Joseph II of Austria would revoke his decision to prohibit the controversial comedy with revolutionaries touches by Pierre Beaumarchais. In spite of this, none of the changes made by the librettist diminished in the least the subversive subtext which was projected up until our times: the brilliant and intelligent denunciation of tyranny and patriarchy which has existed forever.  In all truth, opera buffa was – from the times of La serva padrona– a universe of fiction in which a woman of a lower social class could prevail over a man of a higher stratum with audacity and a never ending smile.  However,  Le nozze di Figaro took this framework to a level never seen before, in which the characters are less in control of the situation the further up the social scale ( and gender) they find themselves. 
 

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