The Barber of Seville – An introduction to the opera by Rossini.
With its tuneful score and mercurial story, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) is the most popular comic opera in the world. Gioachino Rossini composed Il Barbiere di Siviglia in Via dei Leutari, in the building opposite the apartments of Palazzo Olivia, where he stayed in 1816.
Rossini was notoriously lazy. He delayed completing his commissions until the last possible moment, and often "borrowed" music from his other operas to spare himself the labor of writing new material. The famous overture from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, for instance, had been previously attached to three different operas. Rossini also worked fast; Il Barbiere was dashed off in an incredible thirteen days. Really impressive, if we consider that a good copyist in Rossini's times took just twenty days to make a copy of the same amount of pages contained in Rossini's manuscript... In all, his gift for melodic invention allowed him to produce an astounding thirty-nine operas in nineteen years.
On the first performance at Teatro Argentina in Rome,
Il Barbiere was a great fiasco. Some time later it was discovered that many spectators were corrupted by Paisiello, who had understood that this new Barbiere would have canceled his old one from the theaters.
That night many curious things happened: the strings of the onstage guitar broke. Don Basilio, interpreted by the bass Vitarelli, coming on the stage stumbled and fell on his face. While singing "la calunnia" his nose was still bleeding, and he had to tampon his nose after every phrase. A cat living near Teatro Argentina slipped on the stage and started meowing and rubbing on the singers' legs, while the audience laughed crazily!
At the end of the performance, a furious Rossini eluded the laughing audience, and walked back, all alone, to Via dei Leutari. But at the second performance there was a well-deserved triumph. As a curiosity, Rosina's Aria during the music lesson was quite always chosen by the soprano, even because this choice does not interfere with the plot. Even nowadays some famous singers use to follow this tradition: well-known is the use of the "Cavatina" from Rossini's Tancredi, by the great soprano Marilyn Horne.
Theatre in Rome: classics and opera in Roma
The "Theatre in Rome" site has a list of the main classical music and opera performances in Rome. You can buy tickets on-line and find useful information on the capital’s theatres.
Rome’s Auditorium: music, concerts and events
Auditorium presents symphony orchestra and chamber music and also has a varied programme of jazz, pop, rock, world music, cinema openings, plays, art exhibitions and literary performances.
