About the work
Gioachino Rossini's comic opera in two acts was premiered in 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. Based on Beaumarchais's play, it sits chronologically before Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro, showing the same characters at a younger age. The premiere was a notorious disaster, marked by audience hostility and a cat walking across the stage, but the opera became an international triumph within weeks.
Plot
Count Almaviva, disguised as a poor student named Lindoro, courts Rosina, ward of the scheming Doctor Bartolo, who intends to marry her himself. The Count enlists the ingenious barber Figaro to help him reach Rosina. Through a cascade of disguises—a drunken soldier, a substitute music teacher—and with the assistance of Figaro's shrewd scheming, the Count outmanoeuvres Bartolo and Rosina's corrupt music teacher Don Basilio. A hasty marriage contract is signed just before Bartolo can intervene, and all ends in festive reconciliation.
Cultural significance
Il Barbiere di Siviglia ranks among the most beloved comic operas in the repertoire and contains Figaro's showstopping aria Largo al factotum, with its tongue-twisting refrain Figaro qua, Figaro là. The work demands exceptional virtuosity from all principals and especially from the coloratura mezzo-soprano or soprano singing Rosina. Rossini composed the entire score in under three weeks, at the age of twenty-three—a feat that continues to astonish musicologists.