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 (1904 film) The Barber of Seville (1904 film) The Barber of Seville (), also released as The Barber of Sevilla, or the Useless Precaution, was a 1904 French silent film directed by Georges Méliès, based on the play of the same name by Pierre Beaumarchais. It was released by Méliès's Star Film Company and is numbered 606–625 in its catalogues, where it was advertised as a "comédie burlesque en 7 actes, d'après Beaumarchais". Like several other of Méliès's longer films, two versions were released simultaneously: a complete 22-minute print and an abridged print. As with his 1904 film "Faust and Marguerite", Méliès