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.
Flute Concertino (Chaminade)
Scholarship indicates that the Concertino was commissioned by the Paris Conservatoire in 1902, presumably as an examination piece for flute students, where the celebrated French flautist and teacher Paul Taffanel, to whom the Concertino was dedicated, taught. Among flautists, legend has it that Chaminade wrote the Concertino to punish a flute-playing lover after he left her to marry someone else, wanting to make a piece so fiendishly difficult that he could not play it (though he supposedly did manage). However, Chaminade had married a music publisher the year before the piece was commissioned, which lessens the validity of the legend. Not long after composing it, Chaminade orchestrated it for a London concert played by her friend, flautist Marguerite de Forest Anderson.