The Barber of Seville Gioacchino Rossini Performed in Italian with English Supertitles Single tickets on sale Aug. 11 (Sept. 2 in Fairfax) Figaro! Figaro! FIGARO! Rossini’s spicy masterpiece is a nonstop comedy express. Its spirited music bounces us happily along with the outrageous mayhem dispensed by a singing barber CONDUCTOR: PETER MARK STAGE DIRECTOR: GREG GANAKAS

Full Synopsis

ACT II. The curtain rises as Rosina is penning a letter to Lindoro.  Don Basilio, a money-grubbing music teacher, comes to spread rumors of the Count Almaviva’s presence in Seville.  This information drives Bartolo to scheme with Basilio to step up the wedding plans to that very night. Figaro comes to inform Rosina that her serenading lover is awaiting her letter in acceptance of his affections.  To Figaro’s surprise, she reveals that such a letter has already been written.  He goes off to deliver it, and Almaviva, disguised as the drunken soldier appears soon afterwards. Bartolo produces a certificate which exempts him from housing visiting soldiers.  The police arrive to arrest the drunken nuisance to the Doctor, when it is quietly revealed to the commanding officer that he is none other than the Count, and master of the armed forces in Spain.  Confused by their refusal to arrest the soldier, all are struck with immediate headaches after such a confusing evening.

ACT III. That evening, Rosina is scheduled for a music lesson with Don Basilio, but a young assistant shows up in his stead.  This is none other than our Count Almaviva, this time disguised as Don Alonso.  Rosina recognizes him immediately.  ‘Don Alonso’ persuades Bartolo that he is as deceptive and underhanded as his master, by producing the same letter that Rosina had sent to ‘Almaviva’.  However, it is presented to Bartolo as a letter given to ‘Alonso’ by one of Almaviva’s mistresses.  Having gained Bartolo’s trust, he is permitted to be alone with Rosina.  When Figaro arrives, he distracts Bartolo with a shave while the two lovers revel in each other’s amorous gaze. Plans for the escape are set for midnight, and overhearing the lovers’ plan, Bartolo runs to send Basilio for the notary.  Meanwhile, Bartolo corners Rosina and proves her lover’s infidelity by producing the letter from the mysterious Count Almaviva, and explains that ‘Lindoro’ was only a messenger sent to seduce her in Almaviva’s place.  Crushed, Rosina agrees to marry Bartolo that evening, and reveals the plans for the midnight escape.  After a tremendous storm has passed, Figaro and Almaviva (having left all disguises behind) arrive for their scheduled rendezvous.  Furious, Rosina confronts ‘Lindoro’ with his horrendous behavior, and it is only after he has proven that he is himself the Count that she falls into his arms in a beautiful embrace.  The notary arrives and the Count and Rosina marry at once.  Bartolo arrives only too late to stop the ceremony and is silenced by the triumphant Almaviva.  Our story ends in jubilant celebration of the new union – all thanks to the cleverness and wit of our favorite Barber … Figaro!

About the Composer

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was the most important Italian opera composer during the first half of the 19th century.

A whole generation of music lovers, from 1820 to 1840, acclaimed Rossini the undisputed king of opera composers, living or dead, and in the eyes of the opera world, he was idolized and adored, towering significantly over the shoulders of Mozart, Gluck, or even Beethoven.

Though Rossini is best known for his opera buffas, his comic and satiric operas, he also composed opera serias, operas with serious themes. Whatever the particular genre, all of his music contains a unique melodic inventiveness and rhythmic vitality: those special features became the inspiration for his illustrious bel canto contemporaries, Bellini and Donizetti, as well as the young Verdi.

Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy. As a child, he displayed exceptional musical talent, which earned him entry into the Bologna Conservatory at the age of 12. In 1810, at the age of eighteen, he wrote his first opera, La Cambiale di Matrimonio, “The Marriage Contract,” but his first substantial success occurred two years later with his opera, La Pietra del Paragone, “The Touchstone,”introduced at La Scala and given 50 performances in its first season. Tancredi and L’Italiana in Algeri followed, and were even greater triumphs. By the age of 21, with these early successes, Rossini had already become established as the idol of the Italian opera public.

In 1815, he was engaged to write new works as well as direct two opera companies in Naples. His first opera under that arrangement was Elisabetta, written expressly for the popular Spanish prima donna, Isabella Colbran, the former mistress of the King of Naples, and later the woman who would become his wife for whom he would write several operas. 

Rossini wrote his celebrated opera buffa masterpiece, The Barber of Seville, for production in Rome. Even though a combination of circumstances spelled disaster for the opera at its premiere, on its second evening the opera was acclaimed, and with each successive performance, it gained new admirers. Today, it is generally considered the greatest comic masterpiece in the entire operatic canon.

In 1822, after marrying Isabella Colbran, Rossini left Italy for Vienna where he and his operas became the rage. Two years later, he went to Paris to direct the Théâtre des Italiens. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X gave him a contract to write five new operas a year; and at the expiration of the contract, he was to receive a generous pension for life.

During his Paris years, between 1824 and 1829, Rossini created the comic opera Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (1829), “William Tell,” the latter a political epic adapted from Schiller’s play (1804) about the 13th century Swiss patriot who rallied his country against the Austrians. The stylistic innovations Rossini introduced in both these works would eventually influence composers as different as Adam, Meyerbeer, Offenbach, and Wagner.

His contemporary audience considered his music like vintage wine, always improving with age, and never growing sour or flat. His music was always fresh, gay, simple, and saturated with bubbling melodies and an inexhaustible joie de vivre; it was  music that was easily understood at first hearing, and never required the discovery of an underlying significance.

Though Rossini was only 38 years old when he completed William Tell, he had already composed 38 operas.  Rossini would put down his operatic pen, retire, and live for 38 years more, never again writing another note for an opera.  He was at the height of his creative powers and a world-renowned figure, yet in those next four decades, he produced only some sacred music, a few songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces.

Rossini did not fit into the conventional picture of the starving composer: few composers in their lifetimes ever enjoyed such phenomenal success, and he literally sat on top of the music world, becoming pleasantly intoxicated with his well-deserved success.

Rossini’s sudden withdrawal from the world of opera has inspired much conjecture. Some scholars have concluded that Rossini’s indolence and laziness had gotten the better of him after he had achieved such immense wealth: others claim that the initial failure of William Tell to achieve success had embittered him; that he was disappointed that his fame had become overshadowed by the popularity of those grand opera spectacles of Meyerbeer and Halévy which replaced his opera buffas;  and still others suggest that Rossini’s neurasthenia, a mental disorder characterized by fatigue and anxiety, as well as his debilitating bout with gonorrhea, had become too serious after 1830 and prohibited him from work.

Nevertheless, while in his retirement, Rossini became the major figure in the social and cultural life of Paris. He had become esteemed as Europe’s  leading composer, and his overtures were even compared to those of Beethoven.  He relished the title, “the music emperor of Europe,” and he certainly lived like one, maintaining homes in Italy, Paris, and a summer villa in rural France. Rossini had become rich, famous, and gourmand-stomached.

After finally marrying Olympe Pélissier, a woman whom he had loved for years but could not marry until his first wife died, he reigned like a 19th-century prince in his luxurious Paris apartment, where he entertained friends in the grand manner, granted audiences, held court, and offered commentaries. Legend reports that the great classical composer, Camille Saint-Saëns, would be anxiously sitting in one corner of Rossini’s home waiting his turn at the piano, and in another, a famous singer would likewise be preparing to entertain the bejeweled ladies.

Rossini’s death was brought about by complications following a heart attack.  He was buried in Père Lachaise cemetery in Paris, but at the request of the Italian government, his body was removed to Florence where he is buried in the cemetery of the Santa Croce Church.

Thirty-eight years was a long retirement, and a long time to be devoted to Rossini’s legacy of gourmand eating, attractive women, and sharp witticisms. Nevertheless, the most famous opera composer of his generation preferred to remain silent musically, and in spite of his personal problems and illnesses, one could easily conjecture that perhaps he was satisfied that he had said all he ever wanted to say in the last dramatic scene of William Tell: it was a passionate cry for liberty during an historical time of severe conflict and tension between reform and revolution.