Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Beaumarchais' The Marriage of Figaro is not that it inspired a popular opera that is still widely produced today, but that—according to some—it may have inspired a revolution. Beaumarchais had a long and storied career in his lifetime and was a vocal supporter of the American revolution. When it came to French political revolution, he was less explicit in his support, but The Marriage of Figaro, with its unflinching critiques of class difference and the aristocracy, was said to have been a tipping point in revolutionary thinking of the time. Napoleon even described the play as "the Revolution in action."
When it was first produced, Louis XVI banned it, seeing its characters' incendiary attitudes towards the nobility as threatening to his throne. In an article about Beaumarchais' work for The Guardian, Michael Billington writes, "Louis XVI, with uncanny prophetic insight, said of The Marriage of Figaro: 'For this play not to be a danger, the Bastille would have to be torn down first.'" It was not until 1783 that Louis allowed the play to be produced, even though the censors refused to lift a ban.
Ironically enough, when the French Revolution did break out, Beaumarchais was imprisoned as an enemy of the revolution, in part because he had purchased a percentage of the city's water supply to cover up the humiliation of an adultery suit. His connection to French nobility, in spite of his having been an outspoken critic of the upper classes, made him a target for revolutionaries. He tried to join the ranks of the revolutionaries, purchasing 60,000 rifles for the French Revolutionary Army, but the arrangement did not work out and he was once again labeled an enemy of the Revolution. After two and a half years in exile, Beaumarchais spent the final years of his life in Paris, an ambivalent political figure, despite his many contributions to class consciousness.
