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".
Ferdinando Fontana
During his time in Milan, Fontana wrote two plays in Milanese dialect, "La Pina Madamin" and "La Statôa del sciôr Incioda". Both had considerable success and starred Edoardo Ferravilla, considered one of the greatest comic actors in Milanese theatre. He wrote numerous libretti, including two for Alberto Franchetti ("Asrael" and "Zoroastro") and two for Puccini ("Le Villi" and "Edgar"). He also translated several operetta libretti for performance in Italy, including Franz Lehár's "Die lustige Witwe (The Merry Widow)" and "Der Graf von Luxemburg (The Count of Luxembourg)", Oskar Nedbal's "Polenblut (Polish Blood)", and Edmund Eysler's "Der Frauenfresser (The Woman-Eater)". Early in his career, Fontana's output was prodigious: an 1886 article in "La Stampa" said that at the time, 13 new libretti by Fontana were being composed by 12 different composers.