The audiences in 1786 must have been especially eager to see and hear this revolutionary opera, based on a popular play's satirization of the upper classes, a play that had been banned throughout Europe. The ruling elite was apparently offended by the immoral overtones of Figaro, and were probably not exactly thrilled about being depicted to the masses as lecherous buffoons. In an entrepreneurial tradition that endures today, Mozart and his librettist Lorenzo da Ponte recognized that a lot of money could be made from such a story line if they watered it down operatically just enough to win permission to produce it from the local authorities.
Mozart must have known the audience would want to zip right to the action, because his overture is a quickie sonata-allegro form without a development, just an exposition, where several peppy themes are "exposed," and a recapitulation, where the exposition is recapped, this time with all themes in the same key for a sense of finality. Your garden variety sonata-allegro would insert a development in between the exposition and recapitulation to develop the possibilities of the themes. But the only thing Mozart's audience wanted to have developed was the action of this spicy comedy of courtly errors.
Budding composers (as well as those in "full bloom") may wish to study the two major sections of this overture. In the exposition, can you determine when Mozart changes keys from D to A? And what musical materials does he alter in the recapitulation in order to finish in the home key of D major?
