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
Virginia Opera Gardner, Sujung Kim, Frank Porretta, Grant Youngblood, Fabiana Bravo, Mary Elizabeth Williams, Nmon Ford, Jeniece Goldbourne, Randall Scarlata, and Thomas Rolf Truhitte. Attracting acclaimed directors from the theater and opera world, the company has given audiences the experience of seeing the work of Gian Carlo Menotti, Gordon Davidson, Greg Ganakas, Arvin Brown, Dorothy Danner, Lillian Groag and Sam Helfrich, among others, in new productions designed by the nation's top opera and theatre designers. The first few seasons consisted of standard works such as "La boheme", "La traviata", "Tosca", "Lucia di Lammermoor" and "The Barber of Seville", all presented in the