" Mozart used the play, about a maid, Susanna, who is to marry a valet, Figaro, as the story line of his opera. Together Figaro and Susana seek to outwit their master who is trying to seduce Susanna. A master had "first night rights" to the female servants when they married in those days. Figaro" successfully champions the ingenuity of the lower classes and the wit of the female over the self-serving, arrogant nobility. The debate that followed the success of this opera is representative of the questions in everyone's minds during those years when the rights of the aristocracy...

The Humanist Tradition, Book 4: Faith, Reason and Power in the Early Modern World. New York: McGraw-Hill. 2002.