Droit du seigneur
In Mozart's "The Marriage of Figaro", which premiered in 1786 with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte, the comic plot revolves around the successful efforts of the young bride and groom, Figaro and Susanna, to block the efforts of the unfaithful Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna. To achieve his aim, the frustrated Count threatens to reinstitute "droit du seigneur". It was based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais.
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.