The Marriage of Figaro (play)
The play formed the basis for an opera with a libretto by Lorenzo Da Ponte and music by Mozart, also called "The Marriage of Figaro" (1786). In 1799, another opera based on the same play, "La pazza giornata, ovvero Il matrimonio di Figaro", was produced in Venice with libretto by Gaetano Rossi and music by Marcos Portugal.
Falstaff (opera)
For a comic subject Verdi considered Cervantes's "Don Quixote" and plays by Goldoni, Molière and Labiche, but found none of them wholly suitable. The singer Victor Maurel sent him a French libretto based on Shakespeare's "The Taming of the Shrew". Verdi liked it, but replied that "to deal with it properly you need a Rossini or a Donizetti". Following the success of "Otello" in 1887 he commented, "After having relentlessly massacred so many heroes and heroines, I have at last the right to laugh a little." He confided his ambition to the librettist of "Otello", Arrigo Boito. Boito said nothing at the time, but he secretly began work on a libretto based on "The Merry Wives of Windsor" with additional material taken from "Henry IV", parts 1 and 2. Many composers had set the play to music, with little success, among them Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1796), Antonio Salieri (1799), Michael William Balfe (1835) and Adolphe Adam (1856). The first version to secure a place in the operatic repertoire was Otto Nicolai's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" in 1849, but its success was largely confined to German opera houses.