The first proper interview I ever conducted was with the late John Wells. The satirist was in the West End performing his Denis Thatcher routine in the smash hit Anyone for Denis? But the subject of our conversation was not the husband of the then prime minister, nothing to do with the UK, nor in fact anything from the 20th century at all. Instead we discussed the events of 1778 and how watchmaker, arms dealer and spy Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais had come to write The Marriage of Figaro.
It was a sequel to his 1773 play Barber of Seville and Wells had written a new English translation. He explained that now, if a book or play was a huge success, it became a movie. In the 18th century, it would become an opera. Mozart delivered Figaro in 1786; 30 years later Rossini wrote The Barber of Seville. It was easy to see why Wells would have wanted to tackle Figaro. The play viciously skewers the aristocracy. Napoleon Bonaparte said it was “the Revolution already put into action”. It was a dangerous success.
