Bastien und Bastienne Bastien und Bastienne ' was one of Mozart's earliest operas, written in 1768 when he was only twelve years old. It was allegedly commissioned by Viennese physician and 'magnetist' Dr. Franz Mesmer (who himself would later be parodied in "Così fan tutte") as a satire of the 'pastoral' genre then prevalent, and specifically as a parody of the opera "Le devin du village" by Jean-Jacques Rousseau. The German libretto is by Friedrich Wilhelm Weiskern, and Johann Andreas Schachtner, based on ' by Justine Favart and Harny de Guerville. After its supposed premiere in Mesmer's garden theater (that is only corroborated
Comic opera aiming to establish an English school of family-friendly light opera by composers such as Frederic Clay and Edward Solomon as a countermeasure to the continental operettas, commissioned Clay's collaborator, W. S. Gilbert, and the promising young composer, Arthur Sullivan, to write a short one-act opera that would serve as an afterpiece to Offenbach's "La Périchole". The result was "Trial by Jury"; its success launched the Gilbert and Sullivan partnership. "Mr. R. D'Oyly Carte's Opera Bouffe Company" took "Trial" on tour, playing it alongside French works by Offenbach and Alexandre Charles Lecocq. Eager to liberate the English stage from risqué French