Meet Figaro, the barber of Seville and the eponymous hero of not just one but two operatic masterpieces. Mozart told the tale of his marriage in Le nozze di Figaro in 1786, and 30 years later Rossini provided the prequel to the story in Il barbiere di Siviglia. But Figaro was originally the creation of French dramatist Pierre-Augustin Beaumarchais, who created a trio of popular – and controversial – plays around his ingenious and ever-resourceful barber. What made them controversial? It’s actually not too different a question from our first: why make Figaro a barber?
The barbers in Beaumarchais’ time did more than just cut hair and shave chins. In the 12th and 13th centuries the clergy – the primary medical practitioners of the day – were forbidden from shedding blood. Who then could carry out even a simple bloodletting, the standard cure-all of the day? Step forward the barber, a man who could be expected to be handy with a sharp knife. Over the centuries the surgical services offered by barbers expanded to include lancing abscesses, setting broken bones, pulling teeth and many more. The barber surgeon was on his way out by the turn of the 19th century, but his legacy, particularly through 16th-century barber pioneer Ambroise Paré, was the birth of modern surgery.
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