True to his pathbreaking and imaginative scholarship, David Armitage has discovered a rich fabric of connections between opera and international law — links that have been largely overlooked by previous scholars. By reading Beaumarchais and Mozart alongside Abraham Wicquefort and other contemporary sources on ambassadorial practice, he brings out some of the implications of his historical and sociological argument that opera was born not only with the modern state, as has long been argued, but also with modern interstate relations and the law of nations. He makes a powerful case for the affinities between opera and international law, recapturing not just the broad interest both held at the time among political elites, but also their disruptive and even revolutionary possibilities.

As Armitage observes, we can read both the Beaumarchais and the Mozart versions of the Marriage of Figaro in a pedagogical mode, particularly given the likely numbers of diplomats in their audiences. While Beaumarchais’s attention to diplomacy is more explicit, I want to suggest, in keeping with what Armitage says about opera’s distinctive expressive capacities, that Mozart pursues diplomatic themes through music in ways not available to Beaumarchais. What I have to say is more speculative than his meticulously documented claims but if he finds any of it suggestive, he may substantiate it more thoroughly than I can do here.

We can read the Marriage of Figaro, with the help of Wicquefort and other diplomatic sources of the time, as a meditation on diplomacy and specifically on the qualities of a good ambassador: an emissary, that is, at once honorable and effective. Both Beaumarchais and Mozart, it seems to me, use an extended contrast between the male and female characters to explore the complicated interplay in diplomatic life between virtue and the capacity for intrigue. In drawing our attention to the international legal aspect of the action of the Marriage of Figaro, Armitage’s approach opens a new perspective on some more familiar features of the work’s plot and characterization, particularly the contrast between the virtues of the female protagonists and the jealousy, tyranny, and vindictiveness of the men. In both the opera and the Beaumarchais play, the women exhibit virtues that the men, particularly Count Almaviva, manifestly lack, and this contrast is illuminated by its resonances with the work’s diplomatic themes.

The heroines are actuated by fundamentally honorable motives, and their desires coincide in essential ways with the social order and the common good. The Count, and to a greater or lesser degree the other male protagonists, including Figaro, are driven by more selfish passions. They are narcissistic, quick to jealousy, over-sensitive, incapable of trusting others, and vengeful. The men are also consistently, almost extravagantly, less adept in deploying the qualities of the ambassador, including morally ambiguous ones like duplicity and dissembling. They are less capable of action in concert with others and more easily taken in by others’ deceptions and so worse at gathering intelligence. Less steady of purpose, they are poor negotiators and mediators. Figaro is generally on the side of the Countess and Susanna in combatting the tyranny of Count Almaviva, but, like the Count, he readily loses faith in his wife, is quick to anger and thoughts of revenge, and easier to dupe than the women. Both Beaumarchais’s plays and Mozart’s opera suggest that the links between these features—honorable motives and ambassadorial expertise—are not coincidental.

Perhaps in keeping with Beaumarchais’s own diplomatic experience, his plays dwell more explicitly on ambassadorial themes than does Da Ponte’s libretto. It is Beaumarchais’s Count who tells his wife that she, with her typically feminine self-command, should be ambassador to London.Footnote ¹ At the end of the key monologue in Act I in which Figaro describes Suzanne, in the Count’s project, as an “undeclared ambassadress”—“ambassadrice de poche”—he ruefully elaborates on the diplomatic theme, describing the Count as delegate not just to the court of England but also to Suzanne’s bed: “representing both the king and me in a foreign court! It’s too much.”Footnote ² Beaumarchais also comments more directly on the injustices of the power asymmetry between men and women, as when he has Suzanne sing the play’s moral at the end:

The play thus brings out the connections between gender politics and ambassadorial ethics more overtly than the opera’s libretto. But Mozart deftly and repeatedly uses the distinctive resources opera affords to address questions of diplomatic ethics and draw our attention to the resonances between the women’s moral virtues and their diplomatic virtuosity. That both Beaumarchais and Mozart situate this conjuncture in the drama’s women may reflects the new attention the figure of the ambassadress was beginning to receive, as indicated by Friedrich Karl von Moser’s 1752 treatise L’Ambassadrice et ses droits. This was written in recognition of the “host of Ladies who have shone by the superiority of their spirit in the management of political affairs, & who have surpassed by the breadth of their vision, their sagacity, & their penetration, men who had grown white [i.e. aged] in business,”Footnote ⁴ though custom prevented all but a handful of women from receiving formal diplomatic appointments.

Passages from Wicquefort’s The Ambassador and his Functions, read alongside moments in Beaumarchais’s and Mozart’s Figaros, can bring out some of the diplomatic qualities they may be teaching. Wicquefort’s 1680 book has been described as “the best-known and most widely read work on diplomacy produced anywhere in early modern Europe.”Footnote ⁵ It was an indispensable text in any diplomat’s library, and Beaumarchais, with his extensive diplomatic experience, undoubtedly knew it well. When the Marquis de Condorcet, with whom Beaumarchais collaborated closely on the famous Kehl edition of Voltaire’s writings, published a collection of key works to educate the citizenry of revolutionary France in 1790, he included Wicquefort alongside Hobbes, Pufendorf, Montesquieu, Hume, and Adam Smith.Footnote ⁶ Beaumarchais may even have had a hand in the book’s production. Beaumarchais and Condorcet had worked closely together throughout the 1780s as the editors of collected works of Voltaire, and Condorcet might have turned to his fellow editor, an experienced diplomat, to create a redaction of this classic work of diplomacy. The 1790 edition offers an instructive perspective on the century-old work, updating it for the revolutionary moment that Figaro in some senses anticipates with its unruly class and gender politics.

The key lesson of Wicquefort’s opening chapter is that an ambassador should be a person of virtue and integrity. A good ambassador knows how to dissemble, but only certain forms of duplicity are compatible with honorable diplomacy. The most effective negotiation and mediation require fundamentally principled motives, alongside a certain cunning. Wicquefort notes that, given the corruption of the modern world, it may be necessary to compromise somewhat on this criterion of virtue and settle for someone who only looks the part, a position the 1790 editor primly rejects as “too indulgent.”Footnote ⁷ This editor, whether Condorcet or a collaborator, adds: “Although the art of counterfeiting oneself has been carried far these days, there are delicate circumstances when the mask falls off. Anyone who is not honest and virtuous at heart will not stand up well to the outside world. Good policy will always choose negotiators of recognised virtue.”Footnote ⁸ Wicquefort distinguishes unworthy forms of imposture from “dexterities [that], far from being criminal, are very commendable; … these artifices, provided they are not accompany’d with Roguery and Knavery, acquire a great reputation to the Embassador.”Footnote ⁹ The ignoble forms make it impossible for a diplomat to conduct effective negotiations and ably represent his sovereign, he notes, and navigating the line between admirable and deplorable forms of deception is a demanding task. The Marriage of Figaro might be read as an extended reflection on this fine and sinuous line, heightened and dramatized through the work’s extended contrast between the men and the women.

Mozart repeatedly draws attention to the women’s legal and diplomatic savoir-faire. We witness an early display in Susanna and Marcellina’s duet “Via resti servita, Madama brillante,” which seems to satirize diplomatic protocols of precedence, as the two vie to outdo each other with backhanded compliments. Readers of diplomatic manuals would have been familiar with the elaborate protocols surrounding an ambassador’s reception and entrance into court, and Wicquefort notes the many ways that diplomatic civilities can go awry. It may seem as if inflated courtesies are trifles, he writes, but they can seriously damage diplomatic relationships.Footnote ¹⁰ In the duet, Marcellina and Susanna exchange insults in the guise of one another’s titles to precedence: “The bride to be!” “A lady in waiting.” “The Count’s favorite.” “The toast of Spain.” “Your qualities.” “Your dress.” “Your position.” And Susannah’s clincher: “L’età [your age]!” The musical setting draws attention to the formalized nature of the ritual the women are satirizing. The two are bickering, yet the duet is harmonious: they sing in a gorgeous series of descending thirds. They are in sufficient command of their diplomatic protocols to insult one another while maintaining something like musical civility. The scene may even be seen to illustrate the case in which “ambassadors of two enemy princes … reside in the same court”:Footnote ¹¹ Wicquefort observes that “they never visit one another during an open war; they must even avoid seeing one another. But if by chance they meet, they must be civil to each other, since they must follow the generous inclinations of their masters, whose animosities are never rustic or brutal.”Footnote ¹² When Marcellina and Susanna, in enemy camps, are obliged to meet in this scene, they display their mastery of diplomatic civility even as they communicate their hostility with panache. Aspiring diplomats in the audience would have done well to take note.

Indeed, the women repeatedly prove themselves more observant of legal subtleties than either the Count or Figaro, and they use their knowledge of the law to manipulate the Count, always for honorable ends in keeping with diplomatic strictures. A key moment in the action, as Armitage mentioned, concerns the notarial seal that is missing from Cherubino’s military commission. The Count overlooks this requirement, both when he issues the commission in his exasperated effort to get Cherubino away from the estate and its women, and again when the commission finds its way back to him and he suspects the page is still around. In contrast, in both the play and the opera, the Countess immediately notices the missing seal when Cherubino shows her his commission. And the Countess and Susanna realize long before Figaro that they can use the missing seal to foil the Count’s jealous machinations. It is important for the story that their deception is fundamentally blameless: yes, Cherubino was hiding in the Countess’s room, but her behavior toward him was honorable, and the trick was necessary only because of the Count’s extravagant (and hypocritical) jealousy.

Mozart further brings out the women’s diplomatic mastery in the duet between the Count and Susanna that opens Act III: “Crudel! Perché finora, Farmi languir così?” Susanna uses linguistic ambiguity to appear to agree to the Count’s sexual demands even as, strictly speaking, she is refusing them. As Wicquefort advised: “The ambassador is not obliged to reveal all his thoughts, and he is allowed, or rather under a necessity, to disguise them sometimes; but [I do not believe he is] allowed, on any occasion whatever, to act contrary to the principles of honor; that is to say, [to] destroy the truth by a lie.”Footnote ¹³ Susanna demonstrates exactly this finesse. Following her plan with the Countess to trap the Count through his infidelity, Susanna tells him she will meet him in the garden as he wishes. As the Count hounds Susanna to agree to a tryst, she responds in way that appears receptive, but, through a series of seemingly accidental slips, refuses her consent to his coercive “progetto.” The Count, though confused and vaguely mistrustful, takes her slips at face value and assumes she is truthfully reporting her intention to meet him. Driven by the presumption typical of those with power, he is an inept negotiator, able to hear only what he wants to rather than what she is really saying. Once again, even as Mozart follows the substance of Beaumarchais’s scene, he uses musical resources to amplify the diplomatic lesson, heightening the poignancy of the fraught but wily maneuvers that Susanna must carry out in order to foil the Count’s aggressions.

There may even be a passing diplomatic allusion in Susanna’s summons to Cherubino in Act II, when she and the Countess are disguising the page as a girl for their evening deception: another moment where opera can draw attention to ritual. Mozart and Da Ponte have Susanna sing “Venite, inginocchiatevi” (“Come, kneel”), the term inginocchiarsi referring among other things to the respectful posture ambassadors routinely took before sovereigns. Kneeling appears only in Beaumarchais’s stage directions, whereas Da Ponte and Mozart make the term and gesture of kneeling before a sovereign-like figure playfully central to the scene. Cherubino adds to the density of the drama’s diplomatic allusions, as the character was apparently inspired by the notorious Chevalier D’Eon, a Freemason, soldier, agent, and spy for Louis XV who lived both as a man and a woman and whose diplomatic career was entangled with Beaumarchais’s in the 1770s.Footnote ¹⁴ In Condorcet’s 1790 edition of Wicquefort, “madame d’Eon” appears in a note criticizing the “principle adopted, perhaps rather inappropriately, by the courts” that women should not be formally appointed ambassador, however effective they have proven as informal diplomats.Footnote ¹⁵ While d’Eon’s notoriety and Condorcet’s gender egalitarianism make it entirely possible that he could have written such a note, its convergence with Beaumarchais’s preoccupations—with the chevalier him/herself and with women’s diplomatic capacities—may lend support to the conjecture that he could have had a hand in its production.

As commentators on the Marriage of Figaro have often noted, the politics of gender interact subtly with the politics of class in Mozart’s opera, and the women’s resistance against the men’s domination parallels the resistance of the commoners against aristocratic control. If the Spanish diplomatic corps was the most aristocratic of the eighteenth century, as Armitage has noted, Ancien Régime France was not far behind. Of the roughly 180 diplomats who served between the death of Louis XIV and the fall of the monarchy, 90 percent were noblemen: 70 percent from the traditional nobility of the sword, and 20 percent from the newer nobility of the robe, according to the historian Gilles Montègre. “In this highly prescriptive social universe,” he adds, “the men of the Republic of Letters were at most given a role on the fringes of official diplomacy, acting within networks of espionage and parallel negotiation, as the famous example of Beaumarchais attests.”Footnote ¹⁶ In the aristocratic world of diplomacy that was both Count Almaviva’s and Beaumarchais’s own, the playwright occupied a position more like that of the women, and their mostly ally Figaro, than that of the official ambassador, Almaviva. We might read the women as a kind of proxy for Beaumarchais himself. More honorable and diplomatically capable than the aristocrats with the official ambassadorial positions, they, and he, were forced by unjust social hierarchies into informal or inferior positions. The drama vindicates them, and both his play and Mozart’s opera conjure a world in which the virtue of the humble triumphs not over guile but through its savvy deployment.