'La folle journée ou La mariage de Figaro' is the title of a stage play by Pierre Augustin Caron, called Beaumarchais, which caused a sensation in Paris at the beginning of the 1780s. In this 'sequel' of 'The Barber of Seville', Beaumarchais zeroed in on numerous deplorable circumstances in absolutist France. Admittedly, Mozart's librettist Lorenzo Da Ponte could not adopt the subject matter for an opera that was to be performed at a house under the control of the Austrian Emperor with all its a...