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.
Ortensio Mauro
(Bartolomeo) Ortensio Mauro (1632/33 – 1725) was an Italian writer and librettist.
He was born in 1632 or 1633 in Padua, where he studied literature at the university. He entered the service of the family of the Elector of Hanover in Germany as Italian secretary and eventually became attached to the court of Sophia, Electress of Hanover. Mauro wrote poetry, occasionally served the royal family as a diplomat and wrote the libretti for eight operas by fellow Italian, composer Agostino Steffani including "Henrico Leone", an opera written to inaugurate the new court theatre in Hanover in 1689.
His opera "La superbia d'Alessandro" was the basis for the libretto of George Frederic Handel's opera "Alessandro".