Organization

Conductor

Jakob Lehmann

Singer

Baritone

Kyle Oliver

Fiorello

Tenor

Nicholas Simpson

The Count of Almaviva

Bass

Wil Kellerman

An officer

Hans Tashjian

Figaro

Scott Purcell

Doctor Bartolo

Mezzo-soprano

Hannah Ludwig

Rosina

Daniel Fridley

Don Basilio

Soprano

Alina Tamborini

Berta

Stage director

Cynthia Marino

Teatro Nuovo

Italian

Il barbiere di Siviglia -  (The Barber of Seville)

New York City

United States

Rose Theater

Public

The Barber of Seville

English

Approved

The Barber of Seville: Fact Sheet
The source:  

Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais intended Le barbier de Séville as an opera libretto to begin with, but it was declined by the Comédie-Italienne in 1772, and the author recast it as a straight play the following year. It has remained a classic of French theater. The original production (1775) had incidental music by Antoine-Laurent Baudron, including a song that served for a set of piano variations by Mozart.  

Other operas:

Composers of opera buffa were quick to see musical possibilities in the popular comedy. Giovanni Paisiello’s Barbiere appeared in 1782 and found its way to most European capitals; further settings came from Nicolas Isouard and others in the 1790s. The most attractive may be Francesco Morlacchi’s setting, premiered in Dresden, but it never stood a chance, as Rossini’s opera appeared within a year.

Rossini’s Barbiere premiere:  

The opening night of Rossini’s masterpiece, 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome, has gone down in operatic lore as a colossal flop, probably due to a series of mishaps in a hastily prepared performance rather than to any disfavor towards the music. (Among other things, a stray cat had to be shooed off the stage during the busy finale of Act One.) But the first-night public’s verdict was reversed during the same run of performances, and Il barbiere almost instantly became what it has remained: the single most popular comic opera in history.  

The story at a glance: 

Rosina, an aristocratic orphan, is the legal ward of her tutor, Dr. Bartolo, who intends to marry her. He is both genuinely infatuated with the girl and eager to get his hands on her inherited wealth. But she has caught the eye of the Count Almaviva, who serenades her under the guise of a penniless student “Lindoro.” After one such serenade the Count runs into Figaro, a barber and jack-of-all-trades who had worked for him previously, and who is now enlisted to help get him into contact with the over-protected Rosina.

Bartolo has his own wily helper, Don Basilio, who alerts him to the Count’s interest, and the rest of the story is a race between their efforts to get the marriage contract finalized and the opposing team’s efforts to get the Count into the house and, if she will consent, to get Rosina out of it. The main incidents are the Count’s two disguises: first as a soldier supposedly quartered on Bartolo’s residence, second as a substitute music teacher. 

During the first episode Rosina confirms her interest; during the second, the clever barber gets hold of a key to the balcony, and an escape is planned. The plot is almost foiled: Bartolo, who thinks the intruder is an agent of the Count and not the Count himself, persuades Rosina that her lover is a mere procurer intending to hand her over to his rich employer. But all is resolved when “Lindoro” and the Count are revealed as one and the same. Even Bartolo is reconciled to the denouement: the new husband magnanimously lets the tutor keep the dowry.   

The judgment of history:

The Barber was the very first opera to establish itself in the permanent repertory of every opera-having city in the world. The operatic “canon” starts here. Other composers agreed. Verdi (writing after Falstaff) said that Il barbiere was “...for abundance of real musical ideas, for comic verve and truth of declamation, the most beautiful comic opera in existence.” Beethoven told Rossini in person at their only meeting: “give us more Barbers.”

 

The Barber of Seville: Trivia
Bartolo was an opera buff.  The old-time singer he mentions in Act Two, Caffariello, was a castrato who lived from 1710 to 1783 and was the first to sing Handel’s famous Largo, “Ombra mai fu.”

Some of the music was recycled.  Rossini took the overture, the tune of the tenor’s entrance aria, and the second half of Rosina’s, from Aureliano in Palmira, which had a lukewarm reception at La Scala in 1813-14. He also borrowed the ornaments of Aureliano’s star singer, the castrato G.B. Velluti, with whom he had apparently feuded, and gave them to Rosina. Velluti protested in vain that Rossini had imitated him.

Rossini was a good singer and often performed two arias from Il barbiere in concerts: Figaro’s “Largo al factotum” and Berta’s “Il vecchiotto cerca moglie.” 

The composer had help.  Rossini famously wrote the opera in just 13 days, but he didn’t write quite all of it. The recitatives are by two unidentified assistants; one of them may have been the original Figaro, Luigi Zamboni. Almaviva’s second serenade was almost certainly composed by its own original singer, Manuel García. For most of its stage life, the opera included yet more non-Rossini music: a substitute aria for Bartolo by Pietro Romani, and whatever the evening’s prima donna felt like singing in the Lesson Scene.

The Barber of Seville by Rossini, From (2021/2021), Directed by Cynthia Marino,, Conductor Jakob Lehmann, Rose Theater, New York City, United States

Performance credits (Cast & Crew )

Cast

Program, About & Synopsis

Further reading

Performance Dates & Venues

Venues