The Barber of Seville buffe". After two hundred years, it remains a popular work. Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre de Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera "The Marriage of Figaro," composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy. The first Beaumarchais play was originally conceived as an opéra comique, but was rejected as such by the Comédie-Italienne. The play as it is now known was premiered in 1775 by the Comédie-Française at the
The Barber of Seville (play) Guilty Mother". Though the play was poorly received at first, Beaumarchais worked some fast editing of the script, turning it into a roaring success after three days. The play's title might be a pun on Tirso de Molina's earlier play "El Burlador de Sevilla" ("The Trickster of Seville"). Mozart wrote a set of 12 variations, K.354, on one of Baudron's songs, "". The story follows a traditional Commedia dell'arte structure, with many characters seemingly based on famous stock characters. The plot involves a Spanish count, called simply The Count although "Almaviva" appears as an additional name (whether it is a