Le nozze di Figaro

First performed at the Burgtheater in Vienna on 1 May 1786. Beaumarchais's play had been banned from the Viennese stage, and Da Ponte's libretto removed the political speeches while keeping the plot that had made them possible: a servant outwitting his master in the course of a single day. So many numbers were encored at the early performances that Joseph II restricted repeats of ensembles. The Viennese run was modest; it was Prague, later the same year, that turned the work into a success, and the commission for Don Giovanni followed from it.