The Marriage of Figaro
The Marriage of Figaro (, ), K. 492, is an opera buffa (comic opera) in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. The opera's libretto is based on a stage comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais, "La folle journée, ou le Mariage de Figaro" ("The Mad Day, or The Marriage of Figaro"), which was first performed in 1784. It tells how the servants Figaro and Susanna succeed in getting married, foiling the efforts of their philandering employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity.
Les pêcheurs de perles
The libretto was written by Eugène Cormon and Michel Carré. Cormon was a prolific author of libretti and straight drama, usually in collaboration with other writers. In his career he wrote or co-wrote at least 135 works, of which ', set to music by Aimé Maillart, was perhaps the most successful. Carré, who had initially trained as a painter, had worked with Jules Barbier on Gounod's opera "Faust" and had co-written the play ', which became the basis of the libretto for Offenbach's opera "The Tales of Hoffmann". Before ' Cormon and Carré had previously written a libretto for Maillart on a similar theme, ', which had been performed in 1860; they had originally planned to set their new story in Mexico before changing its location to Ceylon.