I updated my fanfic. Dozens of historical easter eggs in each chapter, I'll literally give a prize to the reader who spots them all😁
All Pierre's Dreams Come True 🔥
Pairing: Pierre Beaumarchais/Antonio Salieri, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart/Antonio Salieri
Summary:
Arms dealer Pierre Beaumarchais hired Antonio Salieri to write the score for his vanity project, moved him into his home, called his music too feminine, forced him to scrap hundreds of hours of material, and publicly boasted that the younger man gave him "delightful pleasure in the evenings". They went everywhere together and people noticed that they were giving a weird 'master and servant' vibe. Beaumarchais wanted Salieri to stay with him for good…
Then Salieri got accused of the murder of his friend and rival, Wolfgang Mozart.
This is historically accurate.
I just didn't feel like juggling their massive 18th-century families, so I threw the entire mess into the 21st century.
A whole bunch of books and articles accuse Beaumarchais of burying his opera Tarare "because he could hire Mozart. But chose Salieri. WTF! How could he hire Salieri instead of Mozart?".
Why would he hire a guy who couldn't write a crowd pleaser?
Mozart didn't make it in Paris when he tried. Mozart's name wouldn't attract the French audience.
Mozart worked in Vienna and Prague, and Beaumarchais didn't hear his music.
Beaumarchais tried to recruit Gluck (Marie-Antoinette's music teacher and favourite composer) but Gluck advised him to hire his ghostwriter Salieri, who ghostwrote for Gluck in Italy and France. Salieri's opera The Danaides was successful in Paris and landed him a contract with Beaumarchais.
Beaumarchais was more popular than Mozart, internationally. It was Mozart who piggybacked his fame, but apparently all these people who write articles and biographies pretend they don't know it, because "in modern America nobody knows Beaumarchais except of the fans of Mozart's operas".
The most popular musician of that generation was Paisiello, Napoleon's favourite composer, who wrote 94 operas. At the moment Paisiello worked in Russia by invitation of Catherine II. Paisiello used Beaumarchais's The Barber of Seville for his opera, then Martin y Soler used The Barber of Seville for his ballet, and only then Mozart used The Marriage of Figaro. Both adaptations of The Barber were more successful than Mozart's Figaro. The more grounded question would be "why Beaumarchais didn't invite Paisiello?" but for obvious reasons nobody asks it.
Incompatibility from artistic standpoint:
Regarding operas, Mozart's opinion was that "poetry must obey the music", whereas in France the audience wanted to follow the plot and understand every word; opera producers there hired dramatic actors instead of opera singers.
In the preface for Tarare Beaumarchais wrote that he wanted French-appealing minimalist background music behind his text.
Mozart called his music melodic, memorable, so that every coachman could sing it. Beaumarchais didn't want the audience to go out of the theatre whistling melodies and not remembering Beaumarchais's text (which would drown in the operatic singing).
The funniest:
Beaumarchais could listen to Mozart's Figaro if Salieri brought him the score😁 But he brought just the libretto🤣 According to Lorenzo da Ponte’s memoir, Salieri took his libretto of The Marriage of Figaro to Paris and showed it to Beaumarchais, who supposedly praised the way Lorenzo had adapted it for Mozart's opera. However, Beaumarchais's biographers don't mention any contacts with Italy, which means he didn't need to be fluent in Italian. Did Salieri translate for him?
Lorenzo omitted that Pierre Beaumarchais was on the copyright crusade since his twenties (when he was a watchmaker and an older colleague stole a detail invented by young Pierre and advertised it as his own invention). At the moment, in his fifties, Beaumarchais was a union head and fought for royalties for authors. He fumed when someone edited scenes out of his comedies, e.g. he sued actors who refused to play the coronation scene in Tarare, and he was mad when after revolution an edited version of Tarare was staged without his approval.
I bet he fumed just like that when Salieri whipped out the libretto of The Marriage of Figaro and said "My friend Lorenzo da Ponte asks your opinion of his adaptation of your Figaro for Mozart's opera".
Working on the production of Tarare in Austria, Lorenzo da Ponte renamed all the characters, e.g. Astasie became Aspasia, Tarare became Atar, Atar became Axur etc. He didn't explain why. He just mentioned that he translated Beaumarchais's Tarare and changed the title to Axur. Looks like he was afraid that Beaumarchais would sue, hence all the renamings, but there was no legal framework to sue.
My first thought was that they met and bonded because of the harp, and indeed they did. Grendel, the biographer, says that Therese was a 20 yo stranger who came alone to visit notoriously lewd Beaumarchais at night asking to play his harp, achieved things that no whore ever could, and wore the quesaco hairstyle which meant a lot.
Grendel didn't specify what it meant and I had to google.
It didn't mean anything whoreish. In Therese's case it meant "I have a viral hairdo like Marie Antoinette, and it echoes a meme from Beaumarchais's legal battles".
The "Quésaco"—a hairstyle worn with a plume of feathers at the back of the head, atop the towering structure.
The Quésaco originated from an amusing anecdote: Louis Marin, a lawyer at the Parliament of Paris, kept repeating "quésaco" while arguing a case against Beaumarchais. Beaumarchais mocked him, and "Quésaco" quickly became a popular catchphrase that took the town by storm. In Occitan, quésaco means "what is it?" Marie Antoinette found it endlessly funny, and the milliner Rose Bertin seized the opportunity to create the Quésaco hat. Princesses and fashionable ladies wore it.
Other Beaumarchais-inspired microtrends:
*à la Susanne*—the last a tribute to Mademoiselle Contat, who gave a magnificent performance as Susanne in *The Marriage of Figaro*, first staged on April 27, 1784. Beaumarchais’s lawsuits had given rise to *à la Quesaco* caps; his dreadful opera *Tarare* popularized *à la Tarare* caps.
In 1789, Félix Sébastien Feuillet de Conches reports—not without a touch of malice—that “hoping to secure a seat in the Paris electoral assembly meeting at the Hôtel de Ville, Beaumarchais published yet another mémoire in which he boasted of having paved the way for and hastened the Revolution through his opera Tarare, first performed on June 8, 1787. Despite this fine argument and the support of hairdressers, he was not elected.”
https://belcikowski.org/publications/?p=4048
Hairdressers support the author of the barber Figaro, makes sense.
Also: found the guy who started to call Beaumarchais a revolutionary! His own self-advertising 😁
One thing I haven’t really seen any other historians mention is the fact that Beaumarchais almost entirely offered service to and/or hired queer people. Chevalière D’Eon, Baron Von Steuben, Du Ponceau, L’enfant. All very possibly queer. This is a really interesting point, actually. I’m surprised we haven’t looked into this. I’m thinking either he was queer himself, or he was just a good enough person to want to rehabilitate those who deserved it.
Ofc you didn't! Days ago I looked up reviews of the American edition of Beaumarchais's biography by Maurice Lever and all the reviewers fumed that Beaumarchais was outdated, irrelevant, known only to the the fans of Mozart's operas in America, and trash talked him like mad because no one will jump at his defence. Comparingly, I saw a slightly critical article about Mozart where a tiny drop of criticism was wrapped in a huge bundle of praise, and most commenters screamed bloody murder, "how dare you shit on Mozart" blah blah.
Research of Beaumarchais's sex life would be good for a book about 18h century French libertines, does something like that even exist in English?
Re: his queerness, he got his startup capital from his sugar daddy, a banker, 50 years older -
"And the 'little girl' responded likewise", adds the biographer.
This is truly the first time I've heard about this at all. I've searched so long for any sign of Beaumarchais queerness implications only to find that no implications needed. ITS RIGHT HERE. THIS IS A REVELATION. Genuinely thank you so much you're such a gem of a being and I'm gonna go do some research on this because this is amazing information. I'm gonna write this into an article or something.
Also yes. Beaumarchais and mozart. When I went to marriage of figaro opera I showed up early to hear a guy explain the backstory of how the opera was created and Beaumarchais' name was mentioned once... One time
Beaumarchais is one of those historical figures who should have so much more attention than he has. He's shockingly underappreciated, even by the historian world. It's shocking to me
Imo that's because the US of A still haven't paid for the military supplies, as they brag on the CIA website. If Beaumarchais gets too much attention, his descendants will try to invoice the American government again. In the 60s his descendant tried to invoice JFK and got ignored.
One thing I haven’t really seen any other historians mention is the fact that Beaumarchais almost entirely offered service to and/or hired queer people. Chevalière D’Eon, Baron Von Steuben, Du Ponceau, L’enfant. All very possibly queer. This is a really interesting point, actually. I’m surprised we haven’t looked into this. I’m thinking either he was queer himself, or he was just a good enough person to want to rehabilitate those who deserved it.
Ofc you didn't! Days ago I looked up reviews of the American edition of Beaumarchais's biography by Maurice Lever and all the reviewers fumed that Beaumarchais was outdated, irrelevant, known only to the the fans of Mozart's operas in America, and trash talked him like mad because no one will jump at his defence. Comparingly, I saw a slightly critical article about Mozart where a tiny drop of criticism was wrapped in a huge bundle of praise, and most commenters screamed bloody murder, "how dare you shit on Mozart" blah blah.
Research of Beaumarchais's sex life would be good for a book about 18h century French libertines, does something like that even exist in English?
Re: his queerness, he got his startup capital from his sugar daddy, a banker, 50 years older -
"And the 'little girl' responded likewise", adds the biographer.
This is truly the first time I've heard about this at all. I've searched so long for any sign of Beaumarchais queerness implications only to find that no implications needed. ITS RIGHT HERE. THIS IS A REVELATION. Genuinely thank you so much you're such a gem of a being and I'm gonna go do some research on this because this is amazing information. I'm gonna write this into an article or something.
Young Pierre was in the policule with some men, his sister, his cousin and some other women - everybody dated each other and staged his first comic plays. Pompadour (the abandoned husband of marquise de Pompadour) would invite them to play for him, and he supposedly was Pierre's lover.
Then Pierre met the banker Duverney and was his service top for the next 10 years. Then Duverney's nephew-in-law La Blache accused Pierre in forgery, sued him for years, and said "I hate him like a lover loves his mistress"🤪 Contrary to what is often said, both sugar mommies didn't bring him money - Duverney did.
If you watch "Beaumarchais l'insolent", you'll see the duel in the courtroom, which is fictional: the attacker, duke Chalney (sp?) spent a day trying to murder Pierre and injured him and his servants, but Pierre didn't defend himself and tried to appease the duke; he was his sexual partner too and they were open about that. Later some nobleman invited both to dinner and they reconciled and dated again.
Maybe soon I'll discover more!
ETA: In the film they conflated duke Chalney with prince Conti, likely because Beaumarchais slept with both, but they were very different😁Conti would never behave like that!
Oh great sages of operatic tumblr what piece from Tarare was Pushkin mentioning in Mozart and Salieri because I swear after listening to 2h45 of Tarare (lovely opera btw) I have not found anything that resembles the melody that is sung in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera and that I have then heard be used in productions of Pushkin's play.
This is the music in Rimsky-Korsakov but I swear I can't find it anywhere and it would be weird to me that he would make something up completely? Perhaps it was from Axur? I have no idea at this point I'll take any information anyone might have.
Different critics propose two different pieces from Tarare. "Povero Calpigi" because it's catchy and Mozart could sing it while feeling happy, or "Hola, doux esclavage" (because the latter includes chanting "la la la la") from the second edition of Tarare. I'd check The Coronation of Tarare, since it's written "Tarare by Salieri" above the "la la la la".
If not, it'd be like in this exchange on youtube: "What's the piece Mozart plays here?" - "It's by Shostakovich" (and they couldn't find any other pieces he played in The Little Tragedies, which means they were written specifically for the film). And the "Salieri's march" from Amadeus was written for the film too. Frustrating, but understandable - it's easier and faster to write an entirely new piece for the film than to listen to the composer's catalogue for days.
Thank you so much for all of this. Now that I think about it I may have watched one production that used Povero Calpigi, though you caught me off guard with the second one bc I don't even know which edition of Tarare is the album I'm listening it from based on, and I have no idea how to distinguish the editions (unless you mean Axur??)... I shall watch Tarare, maybe the visual aid will help me focus and hear what I've missed.
The other theory... yeah... that does make sense, I just sort of would have hoped that had not been the case, but then again it makes sense for one to do it. I will definitely forever be bitter about the Amadeus thing though but that's just because I am a little hater
The second edition of Tarare is expanded. The addition is called The Coronation of Tarare - Beaumarchais pitched it to two French composers but they refused, and he sent it to Salieri. "I wrote a score myself, make it sound exactly like this but good." - Beaumarchais to Salieri about "Hola, doux esclavage" (the la la la song). I don't think they included it in the 20/21 century production, this song so outdated politically I had to rewrite the lyrics completely for my modern AU fic. I most definitely saw the score, it's either in John Rice's "Beaumarchais, Salieri and Tarare", or in (I forgor the author) "Exoticism and Politics: Beaumarchais' and Salieri's "Le Couronnement de Tarare".
Yeah, I'd rather they used the authentic music in films/operas about the real composers. If music isn't by Mozart, it means they just proselytise us: "Mozart genius, worship the name, attack the heretics, nobody cares about his music anyway".
I didn't watch Amadeus and blocked its tag on tumblr😎
One thing I haven’t really seen any other historians mention is the fact that Beaumarchais almost entirely offered service to and/or hired queer people. Chevalière D’Eon, Baron Von Steuben, Du Ponceau, L’enfant. All very possibly queer. This is a really interesting point, actually. I’m surprised we haven’t looked into this. I’m thinking either he was queer himself, or he was just a good enough person to want to rehabilitate those who deserved it.
Ofc you didn't! Days ago I looked up reviews of the American edition of Beaumarchais's biography by Maurice Lever and all the reviewers fumed that Beaumarchais was outdated, irrelevant, known only to the the fans of Mozart's operas in America, and trash talked him like mad because no one will jump at his defence. Comparingly, I saw a slightly critical article about Mozart where a tiny drop of criticism was wrapped in a huge bundle of praise, and most commenters screamed bloody murder, "how dare you shit on Mozart" blah blah.
Research of Beaumarchais's sex life would be good for a book about 18h century French libertines, does something like that even exist in English?
Re: his queerness, he got his startup capital from his sugar daddy, a banker, 50 years older -
"And the 'little girl' responded likewise", adds the biographer.
Salieri's attitude towards "Tarare": 7 of Swords Rx
The picture is spot on:
Salieri, loaded with the Tarare score, runs away from the mason eye! On this pic Pierre Beaumarchais does the masonic gesture ↓
This card means unhealthy relationship, being too much under somebody's influence, emotional dependence, blindly following other people's advice, an overly emotional attitude towards reproaches and criticism from a partner.
He was disingenuous about Tarare, he pretended to avoid the conflict. The card is reversed, i.e. masks off, his lies have been uncovered.
and what was Salieri's attitude towards Beaumarchais's creativity overall: Star Rx
The Star is a card of hope, inspiration, faith in an ideal. Reversed: disappointment, loss of inspiration, and disillusionment with a person or project.
Salieri admired Beaumarchais at first - his audacity, wit, and ability to say dangerous things beautifully. But over time, sobering came: behind the brilliance he saw emptiness or excessive theatricality, behind the love of freedom - posturing, behind the genius - a skillful manipulator of public taste. Beaumarchais was more of a "star" to the public than a genuine source of profound art.
He lost respect for him as a source of inspiration.
Bottom of the deck - hidden foundation: 9 of Cups
The most interesting contrast. The 9 of Cups is the card of emotional fulfillment and secret pleasure. This is what lay beneath the disappointment, beneath the conflict. Salieri enjoyed this period. Paris, the splendor of the French stage - this was what he dreamed of. The hidden truth: he was happy there.
The reason why he left Paris where he'd lived with Beaumarchais? - 10 of Pentacles Rx, Knight of Swords Rx, Page of Pentacles Rx
10 of Pentacles Reversed -
This is not the idyllic clan scene from the Waite deck. Here, there is a rift between those inside and the one outside. The card depicts an arched gallery - a semi-public, stately space. Above are a couple, a child, and white dogs - an image of wealth and social position. Below, apart from the others, a solitary dark-haired figure holding the card of the Pentacles. She is gazing upward at the scene.
The high-status couple with child are Pierre, Therese and Eugenie, the family he lived with; and the figure below looks like an abandoned side piece. Pierre holds Therese's hands, he is fully present for her. Eugenie doesn't look at parents, she looks at the side piece, noticing what adults don't want to notice.
The figure below is Salieri. He watched how Beaumarchais existed within his world - amidst status, connections, family, and social trends. Salieri was functionally integrated into that world but didn't truly belong: a guest, a hired hand. The reversed card signifies that access to this circle has closed off. He holds a pentacle (representing his contribution, his labour) yet it does not lift him up.
Emotionally, Salieri invested something more than mere professional interest in this collaboration. Beaumarchais was brilliant and charismatic; he was magnetic. Yet, in the end, he simply returned to his own life, his family, and his next project.
Status-wise, a side piece never becomes the legitimate partner. No matter how much she gives, she always remains on the outside. Salieri may have composed the music for Tarare, but Beaumarchais remained the owner of its success.
The pentacle in hand represents what the side piece was left with. Money and fame, yes, but no place by his side.
Knight of Swords Reversed -
As a situation, that's conflict spiraling out of control, words spoken in the heat of the moment. An aggressive, abrasive, or confrontational person loses their way. Personality-wise, that's Beaumarchais. He did or said something harsh that ruined what was between them.
Page of Pentacles Reversed -
The figure stands in the opening between two heavy red drapes, neither fully entering nor leaving. Her gaze is wary and appraising. She is observing before making a decision. This is not Waite’s Page, who openly holds a coin and is in the process of learning. This is a scout on the threshold.
Upright, this Page represents the scouting of opportunities, a cautious beginning, and gathering information before taking action.
Reversed, it signifies reconnaissance that led nowhere. There were plans for a future in Paris, negotiations, and the testing of waters - new projects, a new position. The page is a figure of beginning; reversed, it says that the future that Salieri saw in Paris has ceased to exist.
The drapes are stage curtains, theatre. The Page watched another person's life like a play, from behind the curtain.
Here, the reversed Page suggests that the threshold was never fully crossed. Neither in a professional sense nor in a personal one. Incompleteness, missed opportunities, plans that never came to fruition. There were projects, there were agreements on new work - and it all collapsed.
Bottom of the deck - hidden foundation: The Lovers
We have already seen that the 9 of Cups spoke of a fulfilled desire. But underneath are the Lovers. This means that the spread was not just about professional satisfaction and ambition. The Star reversed - the ideal turned out to be unattainable, not because Beaumarchais was a bad artist, but because Beaumarchais himself was idealized.
With The Lovers, the reversed Ten of Pentacles now takes on a far more painful meaning. He gazed up at the Beaumarchais family, and the Lovers card at the foundation reveals that this was a matter of personal loss, of attachment, possibly attraction.
The Lovers are a choice between two paths, two people, two versions of ourselves. The mechanical tree on the left represents his world: discipline, structure, Vienna, court service. The living tree on the right represents pre-revolutionary Paris and Beaumarchais’s world: organic, unpredictable, flourishing.
On this card, the two figures are not looking at each other. They are together, yet each remains in their own sphere. Salieri is holding someone’s hand, but this is a union sanctified by an external force (the angel on the card). A professional contract, a creative partnership - all of this was legitimate, blessed. At the foundation of the spread, this card signifies that Salieri’s deepest desire was not about creative partnership; it was significantly more personal.
All things considered
All the cards in the spread are reversed. Everything playing out - professional collaborations, his departure, his relationship with Beaumarchais - was experienced as resistance, impossibility, and a dead end. He couldn't speak or desire directly.
Yet at the bottom of the deck, the Nine of Cups and The Lovers are upright. Structurally, this means that everything external is distorted and blocked, while everything internal remains fully alive and whole.
The feelings and desire were real, buried beneath layers of impossibility.
Oh great sages of operatic tumblr what piece from Tarare was Pushkin mentioning in Mozart and Salieri because I swear after listening to 2h45 of Tarare (lovely opera btw) I have not found anything that resembles the melody that is sung in Rimsky-Korsakov's opera and that I have then heard be used in productions of Pushkin's play.
This is the music in Rimsky-Korsakov but I swear I can't find it anywhere and it would be weird to me that he would make something up completely? Perhaps it was from Axur? I have no idea at this point I'll take any information anyone might have.
Different critics propose two different pieces from Tarare. "Povero Calpigi" because it's catchy and Mozart could sing it while feeling happy, or "Hola, doux esclavage" (because the latter includes chanting "la la la la") from the second edition of Tarare. I'd check The Coronation of Tarare, since it's written "Tarare by Salieri" above the "la la la la".
If not, it'd be like in this exchange on youtube: "What's the piece Mozart plays here?" - "It's by Shostakovich" (and they couldn't find any other pieces he played in The Little Tragedies, which means they were written specifically for the film). And the "Salieri's march" from Amadeus was written for the film too. Frustrating, but understandable - it's easier and faster to write an entirely new piece for the film than to listen to the composer's catalogue for days.
Goethe wrote a play Clavigo about Beaumarchais murdering a man, both under real names.
Goethe based it on Beaumarchais's own account, how he went to Spain and bullied the fellow writer Clavijo, destroying his career. IRL Beaumarchais didn't kill him, just brandished a gun, and his sister didn't die either.
Goethe likely knew that Beaumarchais had indeed killed someone with a sword, but it was a duel in France, nothing to do with Clavijo.
Beaumarchais didn't clutch pearls that RPF is bad boohoo. He watched Goethe's Clavigo in the theatre when he was in Germany.
Goethe wasn't even the only one who wrote a play about Beaumarchais and Clavijo: there was also a French stage play, and Beaumarchais watched it too, without screaming crying pearl clutching.
There's a 1970 film, a 1988 film and a ballet Clavigo!
(Screenshot: Clavijo hugs the coffin with Beaumarchais's sister. Beaumarchais creeps up on him and stabs him in the back.)
Rosenberg, Sussmayr, Mozart's son, Salieri's daughter, Mozart's biographer Niemetschek, singer Gerl - It's like half of Vienna was named after St. Francis Xavier who was a missionary in Asia and died in China. He is a Jesuit action hero, a saint Indiana Jones, and more importantly - protector against the plague, parents hoped he'd protect their children in the era without antibiotics -
The true story of the Parisian playwright and American agent who teamed up to save the Revolution in 1776, by Jordan Mechner.
Graphic novel about the American revolution. The creators promise to feature Beaumarchais and lament that he is unknown to the modern Americans whereas the US of A exist thanks to him. This is how he looks like in the graphic novel!
Several years ago I read different neopagan online communities and their most knowledgeable members were open about being intelligence officers. Army intelligence, naval intelligence, other services. Which makes me think I should somehow mention in my fic that Pierre was a spy who wrote neopagan propaganda - which is historically correct; I have a post about Tarare being neopagan.
