Pierre Beaumarchais
In 1786, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed an opera, "Le Nozze di Figaro", based on "The Marriage of Figaro", with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte based on the play. Several composers including Paisiello in 1782 wrote operas based on "The Barber of Seville". Rossini's 1816 version is his most successful work and still often performed. In 1966, Darius Milhaud composed an opera, "La mère coupable", based on "The Guilty Mother".
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.