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 Barber of Seville (play) cynical. As he says in "The Barber of Seville": "I must force myself to laugh at everything lest I be obliged to weep." Though he is normally calm, collected and intelligent, he can be irrational when angered. The name 'Figaro' was invented by Beaumarchais for this character, and it has been theorized by Frédéric Grendel that it is made from a phonetic transcription of the words "fils Caron" (Caron having been the given surname of the playwright.) The role was created in "The Barber of Seville" by Beaumarchais's friend Préville. However, when "The Marriage of Figaro" went into production almost