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See below for our main references used in researching the content for this website.

Beaumarchais Play

  • Le mariage de Figaro (1784) – play in French, play in English
  • Coward, David. 2003. Translator. Beaumarchais: The Figaro Trilogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Da Ponte Libretto

Mozart Score

Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro, K. 492 (1786) – full and vocal score, various editions, arrangements, etc. at IMSLP

Websites and Audio-Visual Media

Secondary Sources

Our two main secondary sources in the course were:

  • Allanbrook, Wye Jamison. 1983. Rhythmic Gesture in Mozart: Le Nozze di Figaro & Don Giovanni. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  • Hunter, Mary. 1999. The Culture of Opera Buffa in Mozart’s Vienna: A Poetics of Entertainment. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Other sources:

  • Andrews, Richard. 2001. “From Beaumarchais to Da Ponte: A New View of the Sexual Politics of ‘Figaro.’” Music & Letters 82/2: 214–33.
  • Angermüller, Rudolph. 1988. Mozart’s Operas. Trans. Stewart Spencer. New York: Rizzoli.
  • Barnes, Clifford. 2001. “Vaudeville.” Grove Music Online.
  • Böker-Heil, Norbert, et al. 2001. “Lied.” Grove Music Online.
  • Brown, Bruce Alan. 1986. “Beaumarchais, Mozart and the Vaudeville: Two Examples from ‘The Marriage of Figaro.’” The Musical Times 127/1718: 261-265. https://doi.org/10.2307/965457
  • Brown, Bruce Alan. 1991. Gluck and the French Theatre in Vienna. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  • Butler, Judith. 1993. “Critically Queer,” GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1/1: 17-32. https://doi-org.proxy.mtholyoke.edu:2443/10.1215/10642684-1-1-17
  • Carter, Tim. 1987. W. A. Mozart, Le nozze di Figaro. Cambridge University Press.
  • Dittrich, Marie-Agnes. 2004. “The Lieder of Schubert.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. James Parsons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Dodds, Jerrilynn Denise, ed. 1992. al-Andalus: The art of Islamic Spain. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art.
  • Dodds, Jerrilynn Denise, et al. 2008, The Arts of Intimacy: Christians, Jews, and Muslims in the Making of Castilian Culture. New Haven: Yale University Press.
  • Downes, Edward O. D. 1961. “‘Secco’ Recitative in Early Classical Opera Seria (1720-80),” Journal of the American Musicological Society, 14/1: 50-69.
  • Fernández-Armesto, et. al. 2003, rev. 2022. “Seville.” Grove Art Online.
  • Hart, James D. 1986. “Local Color.” In Concise Oxford Companion to American Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press. OxfordReference.com.
  • Heck, Thomas F., et al. 2001. “Guitar.” Grove Music Online.
  • Jander, Owen, rev. Ellen T. Harris. 2001. “Bass-Baritone.” Grove Music Online.
  • Jander, Owen and Ellen T. Harris. 2001. “Breeches part.” Grove Music Online.
  • Langford, Jeffrey. 2011. Evenings at the Opera: An Exploration of the Basic Repertoire. Milwaukee: Amadeus Press.
  • Levenson, Erica P. 2023. “‘Theatre as a Nursery of Language’: Learning French through Vaudeville Tunes in Eighteenth-Century England.” Eighteenth Century Music 20/1: 13–31. https://doi.org/10.1017/S147857062200034
  • Link, Dorothea. 2008a. “The Fandango Scene in Mozart’s Le Nozze Di Figaro,” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 133/1: 69-92.
  • Link, Dorothea. 2008b. “Performing the Fandango in Mozart’s ‘Le Nozze di Figaro’,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 152/2: 167-178.
  • Link, Dorothea. 2022. The Italian Opera Singers in Mozart’s Vienna. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
  • ​​Linklater, Christina. 2015. “Vagaries of the Vaudeville: Notated Music in French Opera Librettos, 1753–1779.” The Library Quarterly 85/2: 200–205.
  • Mayer, Constance. 2004. “Review of Dorothea Link, Arias for Nancy Storace, Mozart’s First Susanna [2002].” Notes 60/4: 1032-1034.
  • Mitchells, K. 1970. “Operatic Characters and Voice Type.” Proceedings of the Royal Musical Association 97: 47–58.
  • Monson, Dale E., Jack Westrup, and Julian Budden. 2001. “Recitative.” Grove Music Online.
  • Packer, Dorothy S. 1970. “‘La Calotte’ and the 18th-Century French Vaudeville.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 23/1: 61–83. https://doi.org/10.2307/830348.
  • Parsons, James. 2004. “The Eighteenth-Century Lied.” In The Cambridge Companion to the Lied, ed. Parsons. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Pérez, Manuel Casamar. 1992. “The Almoravids and the Almohads: An Introduction.” In al-Andalus: The art of Islamic Spain, ed. Jerilynn Denise Dodds. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art .
  • Reynolds, Margaret. 2001. “Ruggiero’s Deceptions, Cherubino’s Distractions,” in En Travesti: Women, Gender Subversion, Opera. Ed. Corinne E. Blackmer and Patricia Juliana Smith. New York: Columbia University Press.
  • Rosselli, John. 2001. “Castrato.” Grove Music Online.
  • Rushton, Julian. 2002. “Nozze di Figaro, Le.” Grove Music Online. 1992, published online 2002.
  • Steane, J. B. 2002. “Fach.” Grove Music Online. 1992, published online 2002.
  • Steane, J. B. 2002. “Lyric soprano.” Grove Music Online. 1992, published online 2002.
  • Strohmeier, Sophie Gertrude. 2022. “Pants Roles: Gender Fluidity and Queer Undertones in Opera,” WQXR Features (June 1, 2022).
  • Thomas, Hugh. 2006. Beaumarchais in Seville: An Intermezzo. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.
  • Wheeldon, Daniel. 2017. “The Spanish Guitar,” Timeline of Art History: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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