Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was a French playwright and diplomat of the Age of Enlightenment. Best known for his three Figaro plays, at various times in his life he was also a watchmaker, in
Portrait by Jean-Marc Nattier, c. 1755
Louis XV by Maurice Quentin de La Tour, (1748)
The original title page of The Marriage of Figaro
Statue of Beaumarchais in the 4th arrondissement of Paris, by Louis Clausade (1895)
The Marriage of Figaro
Videos
The Marriage of Figaro, K. 492, is a commedia per musica in four acts composed in 1786 by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, with an Italian libretto written by Lorenzo Da Ponte. It premiered at the Burgtheater
Pierre-Augustin de Beaumarchais
…lifted the ban in 1784. The play premiered that year and was enormously popular, even with aristocratic audiences. Mozart's opera based on the play, Le Nozze di Figaro premiered just two years later in Vienna. Beaumarchais's final play, La Mère coupable, premiered in 1792 in Paris. In homage to the great French…
Early 19th-century engraving depicting Count Almaviva and Susanna in act 3
Act 1: Cherubino hides behind Susanna's chair as the count arrives.
Printed libretto for the Prague production of 1786
Engraving of Lorenzo da Ponte by Michele Pekenino, after a portrait by the American painter Nathaniel Rogers (1788–1844)