My natural instinct is to ask why you singled out The Marriage of Figaro in particular (as opposed to, say, Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute)), but instead I’ll just interpret as a synecdoche for Mozart’s (later) operas in general—which are indeed regarded as unusual in their level of perfection.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say “Wagner wasn’t special”. In any case, he was (and to a large extent still is) a perfect example of someone with a fanatical fanbase, and equally fanatical critics. According to my reading of the expert consensus, it places him as one of the Titans of Opera, while acknowledging that his output is not uniform in its greatness. In other words: mostly great, with flaws, but not dramatically bad. (Similar to your description of Shakespeare, actually: people really only care about the best of Wagner.)
IAWYC, but I have a couple of musical issues:
My natural instinct is to ask why you singled out The Marriage of Figaro in particular (as opposed to, say, Don Giovanni or The Magic Flute)), but instead I’ll just interpret as a synecdoche for Mozart’s (later) operas in general—which are indeed regarded as unusual in their level of perfection.
I’m not sure what you mean when you say “Wagner wasn’t special”. In any case, he was (and to a large extent still is) a perfect example of someone with a fanatical fanbase, and equally fanatical critics. According to my reading of the expert consensus, it places him as one of the Titans of Opera, while acknowledging that his output is not uniform in its greatness. In other words: mostly great, with flaws, but not dramatically bad. (Similar to your description of Shakespeare, actually: people really only care about the best of Wagner.)