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The orchestra changes key and tempo, and begins a new inquisition with pitiless reiteration: Antonio produces Cherubino's commission, "These, then, are your papers?" The Count takes the commission, opens it, and the Countess recognizes it. With whispers and signs the women let Figaro know what it is, and he is ready with the explanation that the page had left the paper with him. Why?
The Count's jealous fears are returning, but Figaro allays them by declaring that he is the culprit, and that he made his escape by the window in order to avoid the Count's anger. Antonio then produces a paper which he found dropped among the flowers. This proves to be Cherubino's commission.
Cherubino's philandering with Susanna is interrupted by the Count, who comes with protestations of love, which the page hears from a hiding-place behind a large arm-chair, where Susanna, in her embarrassment, had hastily concealed him on the Count's entrance.
This moment in the unfolding of character Mozart has arrested and eternalised for us in Cherubino's melodies; for it is the privilege of art to render things most fugitive and evanescent fixed imperishably in immortal form. This is indeed a rhapsodical production. Miranda was probably right. Had it not been for Pauline Lucca, I might not have philosophised the Nozze thus.
The Count comes to offer Susanna a dowry if she will consent to meet him that evening, but she will have nothing to say to him. Basilio, the music-master, now enters, and the Count has only just time to slip behind Cherubino's arm-chair, while the page creeps round to the front of it, and is covered by Susanna with a cloak.
Basilio, while repeating the Count's proposals, refers to Cherubino's passion for the Countess. This arouses the Count, who comes forward in a fury, orders the immediate dismissal of the page, and by the merest accident discovers the unlucky youth ensconced in the arm-chair. As Cherubino has heard every word of the interview, the first thing to do is to get him out of the way.
This is the point to which the performance of Cherubino's part by Pauline Lucca at the Scala twenty years ago has led me that I have to settle with myself what I mean by art in general, and what I take to be the proper function of music as one of the fine arts.
It may therefore be fairly said that, in estimating any impression produced by Cherubino's music, the original character of the page, transplanted from French comedy to Italian opera, Mozart's conception of that character, Mozart's specific quality of emotion and specific style of musical utterance, together with the contralto's interpretation of the character and rendering of the music, according to her intellectual capacity, artistic skill, and timbre of voice, have collaborated with the individuality of the hearer.
The Count attempts to box Cherubino's ears, but Figaro, slipping forward at the moment, receives the blow instead. Confusion is at its height. The Count makes love to his wife, thinking she is Susanna, promises her a dowry, and places a ring on her finger. Seeing torches approaching, they withdraw into deeper darkness.
When we were seated at the supper-table and had talked some while upon indifferent topics, the enthusiasm roused in me by Pauline Lucca burst out. I broke a moment's silence by exclaiming, 'What a wonder-world music creates! I have lived this evening in a sphere of intellectual enjoyment raised to rapture. I never lived so fast before! 'Do you really think so? said Miranda. She had just finished a beccafico, and seemed disposed for conversation. 'Do you really think so? For my part, music is in a wholly different region from experience, thought, or feeling. What does it communicate to you? And she hummed to herself the motif of Cherubino's 'Non so più cosa son cosa faccio. 'What does it teach me? I broke in upon the melody. 'Why, to-night, when I heard the music, and saw her there, and felt the movement of the play, it seemed to me that a new existence was revealed. For the first time I understood what love might be in one most richly gifted for emotion. Miranda bent her eyes on the table-cloth and played with her wineglass. 'I don't follow you at all. I enjoyed myself to-night. The opera, indeed, might have been better rendered. The ballet, I admit, was splendid. But when I remember the music even the best of it even Pauline Lucca's part' here she looked up, and shot me a quick glance across the table 'I have mere music in my ears. Nothing more. Mere music! The professor of biology, who was gifted with, a sense of music and had studied it scientifically, had now crunched his last leaf of salad. Wiping his lips with his napkin, he joined our tête-