Family Matters
Family Matters (three scenes from). (Sop., tenor, bar., bass, cl. (bass),
perc.,pno., vc.)
The libretto of Family Matters was written by Amanda Holden, and is based on the third play of the Beaumarchais trilogy, La mère coupable (The Guilty Mother). Written in 1790, after the previous two, better known plays The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro, it was the only one of the three not to have been turned into an opera.
The main characters in all three plays are Count Almaviva, his wife the Countess Rosina, and Figaro their servant, with his wife Susannah in plays II and III. The title of the third play, which takes place some twenty years after The Marriage of Figaro, refers to Rosina’s sworn (‘guilty’) secret that the father of her second son (Leon), was Cherubino (a main character in the second play), who committed suicide soon after receiving a letter from Rosina telling him he had become a father.
By the time of La mère coupable the Almaviva marriage is in serious trouble, (after being very unstable but ‘saved’ in the previous play), and their first son has recently died. The Count has asked an old friend, Bégearss, to help him resolve his problems. Bégearss, the only person who knows the family secrets, seizes his chance to machinate against them all while pretending to be their best friend. When the Count is crazed by the proof of his wife’s infidelity, Bégearss suggests that he can resolve everything by renouncing his title, selling his property, divorcing his wife and sending the son (Leon) away with Figaro; Bégearss is intending to marry the Count’s ward (Florestine, who is actually Almaviva’s daughter) and make off with his fortune. The only person who distrusts Bégearss is Figaro, who saves the situation in the end by revealing Bégearss’s villainy; the family can then confront their true feelings for each other.