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Beaumarchais in Seville

Beaumarchais in Seville

An Intermezzo

by Hugh Thomas
Hardback
Publication Date: 24/01/2007

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In 1764-65, the irrepressible playwright Beaumarchais travelled to Madrid, where he immersed himself in the life and society of the day. Inspired by the places he had seen and the people he had met, Beaumarchais returned home to create "The Barber of Seville" and "The Marriage of Figaro", plays that became the basis for the operas by Rossini and Mozart that continue to delight audiences today. This book is a lively and original account of Beaumarchais's visit to Madrid (he never went to Seville) and a re-creation of the society that fired his imagination. Drawing on Beaumarchais's letters and commentaries, translated into English for the first time, Hugh Thomas investigates the full range of the playwright's activities in Madrid. He focuses particular attention on short plays that Beaumarchais attended and by which he was probably influenced, and he probes the inspirations for such widely recognized characters as the barber-valet Figaro, the lordly Count Almaviva, and the beautiful but deceived Rosine.
Not neglecting Beaumarchais's many other pursuits (ranging from an endeavour to gain a contract for selling African slaves to an attempt to place his mistress as a spy in the bed of King Charles III), Lord Thomas provides a highly entertaining view of a vital moment in Madrid's history and in the creative life of the energetic Beaumarchais.
ISBN:
9780300121032
9780300121032
Category:
Literary studies: c 1500 to c 1800
Format:
Hardback
Publication Date:
24-01-2007
Publisher:
Yale University Press
Country of origin:
United States
Pages:
192
Dimensions (mm):
229x152x19mm
Weight:
0.34kg
Hugh Thomas

Hugh Thomas has written numerous histories on the Spanish-speaking world, including The Spanish Civil War, for which he won the Somerset Maugham Prize in 1962, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom, The Conquest of Mexico and The Slave Trade.

His book The Unfinished History of the World won the first National Book Award for History in 1980. Hugh Thomas was chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies 1979-89 and was awarded a peerage as Lord Thomas of Swynnerton in 1981.

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