The Abduction of Figaro The Abduction of Figaro The Abduction of Figaro is a comic opera, described as "A Simply Grand Opera by P. D. Q. Bach," which is actually the work of composer Peter Schickele. It is a parody of opera in general, and the title is a play on two operas by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: "The Abduction from the Seraglio" and "The Marriage of Figaro". Those two operas, "Così fan tutte", and "Don Giovanni", as well as Gilbert and Sullivan's "The Pirates of Penzance" are among the core inspirations for the piece. Schickele was commissioned to "discover" this opera by the Minnesota
Persian Letters texts and renewed perspectives. Particularly important were the extensively annotated edition by Paul Vernière and the research of Robert Shackleton on Muslim chronology; also studies by Roger Laufer, Pauline Kra and Roger Mercier, which put new focus on the work’s unity and integrated the seraglio into its overall meaning. Others who have followed have looked into the ramifications of epistolary form, the structure and meaning of the seraglio, Usbek’s contradictions. Beginning about 1970 it is religion (Kra) and especially politics (Ehrard, Goulemot, Benrekassa) which predominate in studies on "Lettres persanes", with a progressive return to the role of the seraglio