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
English National Opera Conductors include Sir Charles Mackerras, Sir Mark Elder and Paul Daniel. Those in which the chorus and orchestra of ENO appear are "Lulu", "The Makropoulos Affair", "Werther", "Dialogues of the Carmelites", "The Barber of Seville", "Rigoletto", "Ernani", "Otello" and "Falstaff", as well as the live recordings of "The Ring" and "The Mastersingers". In 1966, under the company's head of design, Margaret Harris, Sadler's Wells Theatre Design Course was founded; it later became Motley Theatre Design Course. ENO Baylis, founded in 1985, is the education department of ENO; it aims to introduce new audiences to opera and "to deepen and enrich