Opera Australia Butterfly", "Turandot", "Aida" and "Carmen" have played. In 1956, the Australian Opera Company was formed in Sydney under the auspices of the Australian Elizabethan Theatre Trust. It commemorated the Mozart bicentenary by presenting four Mozart operas in all capital cities, travelling more than 10,000 kilometres, and giving 169 performances. By 1957, it changed its name to the Elizabethan Theatre Trust Opera Company. In 1959 the company's laid-off singers gave the first of many regional tours (presented by state Arts Councils) with Rossini's "The Barber of Seville" using reduced scenery and conducted from the piano by Georg Tintner (Victoria, New South
The Marriage of Figaro employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. The opera is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. Beaumarchais's earlier play "The Barber of Seville" had already made a successful transition to opera in a version by Paisiello. Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro" was at first banned in Vienna; Emperor Joseph II stated that "since the piece contains much that is objectionable, I therefore expect that the Censor shall either reject it altogether, or at any rate have such alterations made in