a spirit and youthful gaiety which contrast with Figaro's deeper emotions. He begins indeed with unrestrained merriment, but the same motif, mockingly repeated by Susanna, becomes a warning which has so serious an effect upon him that not even her endearments can quite succeed in chasing the cloud from his brow.[27] The ground-tone of the duet, the intercourse of affianced lovers, is expressed with the utmost warmth and animation, and places us at once in the possession of the true state of affairs. Before the end comes, however, we see the couple testing each other's fidelity and measuring their intellectual strength against each other, as when in the last finale Susanna, in the Countess's clothes, puts Figaro to the proof, and he, recognising her, takes his clue accordingly. This duet sparkles with life and joviality, rising, after the explanation, to the most winning expression of tender love.
The characters of the Countess and Cherubino are much less complicated than that of Susanna. The Countess is represented as a loving wife, injured by a jealous and faithless husband. The musical characterisation gives no suggestion of any response, however faint and soon stifled, to the page's advances, but is the most charming expression of ideal purity of sentiment. She suffers, but not yet hopelessly, and the unimpaired consciousness of her own love forbids her to despair of the Count's. Thus she is presented to us in her two lovely songs. The calm peace of a noble mind upon which sorrow and disappointment have cast the first light shadow--too light seriously to trouble its serenity--is expressed with intensest feeling in the first air (Act II., 1). The second (Act III., 4),
when she is on the point of taking a venturous step to recall the Count to her side, is more agitated, and, in spite of the melancholy forebodings which she cannot quite repress, gives expression to a joyful hope of returning happiness. There is no strong passion even here; the Count's affronts
excite her anger, and the dilemma in which she is, placed awakens her youthful pleasure in teasing. This reminiscence of Rosina in earlier years, combined with the consciousness of her true feeling, so finely expressed by the music, may in some measure supply the motive for the deceit which she thinks herself justified in using towards the Count. Signora Laschi, who took the part of the Countess, was highly esteemed in Italy, but was not a great favourite in Vienna.[28] Signora Bussani, on the other hand, who appeared for the first time as the page, although not a singer of the first rank, was much admired by the public for her beautiful figure and unreserved acting,[29] or as Da Ponte says, for her _smorfie_ and _pagliacciate_.[30] "Cherubino is undoubtedly one of the most original of musical-dramatic creations, Beaumarchais depicts a youth, budding into manhood, feeling the first stirrings of love, and unceasingly occupied in endeavouring to solve the riddle which he is to himself. Count Almaviva's castle is not a dwelling favourable to virtue, and the handsome youth, who pleases all the women he meets, is not devoid of wanton sauciness: "Tu sais trop bien," he says to Susanna, "que je n'ose pas oser." To Susanna, with whom he can be unreserved, he expresses the commotion of his whole nature in the celebrated air (Act I., 6) which so graphically renders his feverish unrest, and his deep longing after something indefinable and unattainable. The vibration of sentiment, never amounting to actual passion, the mingled anguish and delight of the longing which can never be satisfied, are expressed with a power of beauty raising them out of the domain of mere sensuality, Very remarkable is the simplicity of the means by which this extraordinary effect is attained. A violin accompaniment passage, not unusual in itself, keeps up the restless movement; the harmonies make no striking progressions, strong emphasis and accents are sparingly used, and yet the