so that its dramatic as well as its musical beauties may be preserved.  There is no lovelier merit in Mozart’s music than the depth and tenderness with which the honest love of Susanna for Figaro and the Countess for her lord are published; and it is no demerit that the volatile passion of the adolescent Cherubino and the frolicsome, scintillant, vivacious spirit of the plotters are also given voice.  Mozart’s music could not be all that it is if it did not enter fully and unreservedly into the spirit of the comedy; it is what it is because whenever the opportunity presented itself, he raised it into the realm of the ideal.  Yet Mozart was no Puritan.  He swam along gayly and contentedly on the careless current of life as it was lived in Vienna and elsewhere in the closing decades of the eighteenth century, and was not averse, merely for the fun of the thing, to go even a step beyond his librettist when the chance offered.  Here is an instance in point:  The plotters have been working a little at cross-purposes, each seeking his own advantages, and their plans are about to be put to the test when Figaro temporarily loses confidence in the honesty of Susanna.  With his trust in her falls to the ground his faith in all woman-kind.  He rails against the whole sex in the air, beginning:  “Aprite un po’ quegl’ occhi?” in the last act.  Enumerating the moral blemishes of women, he at length seems to be fairly choked by his own spleen, and bursts out at the end with “Il resto nol dico, gia ognuno lo sa” ("The rest I’ll not tell you—­everybody knows it").  The orchestra stops, all but the horns, which with the phrase

[Musical excerpt]

aided by a traditional gesture (the singer’s forefingers pointing upward from his forehead), complete his meaning.  It is a pity that the air is often omitted, for it is eloquent in the exposition of the spirit of the comedy.

The merriest of opera overtures introduces “Le Nozze di Figaro,” and puts the listener at once into a frolicsome mood.  It seems to be the most careless of little pieces, drawing none of its material from the music of the play, making light of some of the formulas which demanded respect at the time (there is no free fantasia), laughing and singing its innocent life out in less than five minutes as if it were breathing an atmosphere of pure oxygen.  It romps; it does not reflect or feel.  Motion is its business, not emotion.  It has no concern with the deep and gentle feelings of the play, but only with its frolic.  The spirit of playful torment, the disposition of a pretty tease, speaks out of its second subject:—­

[Musical excerpt]

and one may, if one wishes, hear the voice of only half-serious admonition in the phrase of the basses, which the violins echo as if in mockery:—­

[Musical excerpt]

But, on the whole, the overture does not ask for analysis or interpretation; it is satisfied to express untrammelled joy in existence.