1732-1799
Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (birth name minus the Beaumarchais), who at one point in his 67 years did almost everything, including the writing of very influential plays, was born on this day in Paris, France. Born into a middle class family of former Huguenots; his father was a watchmaker (a profession that he would take up himself in life, amongst a myriad of others!). One of the youngest in a family full of older sisters, he was the only son, and reportedly spoiled by all. He was schooled (partially in the classics) up through the age of 12, when he left school to become an apprentice to his father. Though smart, but given to flights of "daydreaming" and bouts of nonchalance, he was a poor student at work. However, the pocket-watch, at the time a very unreliable mechanism and little more than a piece of jewelry, caught his attention. By the age of 21, he had perfected a new and much more accurate version that also more compact. His invention caught the attention of the royal clockmaker, as the two had been acquainted when Beaumarchais was briefly on apprentice to him. After the clockmaker attempted to take credit for the invention, Beumarchais, rightly outraged, wrote to the French Academy of Sciences, proving that he was the rightful inventor by precisely describing the intricate workings of the machine. This brought him to the attention of the royal family. He was soon wed (1755), with a new name (de Beaumarchais) and coat of arms. Almost a quickly, he was widowed and left with debts of his own making (there remain to this day suspicions surrounding the deaths of two of his wives--especially his first). His circumstances were mitigated when he was appointed a music teacher to one of the king's daughters. He worked in various capacities in royal service and on many different levels of government; he also rose in society and was able to afford at least two titles. In 1964 he left France for Madrid; the reason for this was initially for business reasons--and nasty ones at that!--as the proposal was to gain liscenese to import slaves into the Louisiana territories newly acquired by Spain. The "venture" came to nothing, but the experience left him with lifelong impression that would stay with him to such a degree that he made them the marshal subject of his writing. His return to his native France saw his deep involvement in theater and public musical performances for the first time in his life. It was at this time that the thought of writing for the theater first occurred to him, and he penned his first drama in 1767, which was followed by another in 1770. The plays for which he is famous for however were not premiered until some 10 or 11 years after his return from Spain (though every indication that he had been working on them since around 1765 are attested to in correspondence). These plays, all based in Spain, are collectively known as "The Figaro Plays." In English they are known as "The Barber of Seville," "The Marriage of Figaro" and "The Guilty Mother." The first two of these are immensely well known, in part due to their utilizations in opera; with the most well known being a Mozart composition. It is with these plays that silent films are concerned. Upon their first readings in the court of Louis XIV--the King was heavily critical of the writing. They all had a components that, though set solidly in Spain, were just as solidly French in content and political at that. Nonetheless, the works--rolled out progressively--became quite popular at home and in London (where they were presented in English translation). Marriage was eventually banned by the King, despite first allowing it to pass censorship. Louis was not without his detractors in this, not least was his own Queen, Marie-Antionette, who was evidently a big fan of Beaumarchaise. The ban was lifted in 1784, mostly probably at the continued insistence of the Queen; upon public performance after the ban was lifted, the works became a rage in popularity. Beaumarchais would go on to live an extremely colorful life, becoming one of the French players in the American Revolution. He would wind up in exile in Austria after a contentious existence during the French Revolution, but eventually made his way back to France to live out his days in the capital. He died there at the age of 67 on the 18th of May, just a few months before the dawning of the new century; he is buried in Paris' Pere Lachaise. As far as film is concerned, the first of his works utilized for a screenplay was Le Barbier de Séville in the 1904 Méliès short of the same name. The play was next filmed four years later in Sweden for Svenska Biografteatern (IMDb link here). The Marriage of Figaro was first committed to film in 1911 in Italy. In all, seven films were made from these works in the silent era, proudced in four different countries, including his own France; none of these was in the UK or the US. The last of these is a doozy of a film produced in his home country that ran for a whopping 2 hours! Simply entitled Figaro, it presented all three works together for the first time with the intent to commit them to film (it was the first time that the last of the three plays La Mére coupable was ever filmed) and was released in November of 1929--the film was fully silent, despite recent innovations in film sound technology. It would be 7 years before another film was produced from his work; the first in the sound era--The Barber of Seville--ran for just over 50 minutes, was presented in operatic form and was released in France in 1936. In 1954, The Adventurer of Seville was produced as music translated for the first time fully into Spanish--the language that the plays homaged in the first place. The first television film produced from his work was for French television in 1960 and aired on the 17th of September; and the first television series to present an episode based on his work was Spain's Teatro de siempre, in the 1967 staging La boda de Fígaro. The most recent presentation on any sort of film medium came in 2014 in an operatic staging of Rossini's work--Rossini: Il Barbiere di Siviglia--for the series The Metropolitan Opera HD Live, which aired on the 22nd of November. It should also be noted that Beaumarchais served as a librettist once during his lifetime, to composer Salieri. He penned the libretto to Salieri's opera Tarare, which has been filmed once in 1988: Tarare was a three hour West German production.
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