The Figaro Trilogy The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro, The Guilty Mother

The Barber of Seville, The Marriage of Figaro and The Guilty Mother were the first plays to use a set of recurring characters who develop over time. They chronicle the slide of the ancien regime into revolution and Figaro was seen as a threat to the establishment. The impertinent, bustling servant was appropriated by Mozart and Rossini for their own purposes, and Beaumarchais became eighteenth-century France's only truly international theatre star.