Il Barbiere di Siviglia – Teatro alla Scala 1999.
Almaviva : Juan Diego Florez
Rosina : Sonia Ganassi
Bartolo : Alfonso Antoniozzi
Figaro : Roberto Frontali
Basilio : Giorgio Surjan
Berta : Tiziana Tramonti
Dir. : Riccardo Chailly
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From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
Gioachino Rossini
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution (Italian: Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais‘s French comedy Le Barbier de Séville (1775). The première of Rossini’s opera (under the title Almaviva, o sia L’inutile precauzione) took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome.[1]
Rossini’s Barber has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all “opere buffe“. Even after two hundred years, its popularity on the modern opera stage attests to that greatness.[2]
Composition history
Figaro
Rossini’s opera recounts the first of the plays from the Figaro trilogy, by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais, while Mozart‘s opera Le nozze di Figaro, composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy. The first Beaumarchais play was originally conceived as an opéra comique, but was rejected as such by the Comédie-Italienne.[3] The play as it is now known was premiered in 1775 by the Comédie-Française at the Théâtre des Tuileries in Paris.[4]
Other operas based on the first play were composed by Giovanni Paisiello (Il barbiere di Siviglia (1782), by Nicolas Isouard (1796), and by Francesco Morlacchi (1816). Though the work of Paisiello triumphed for a time, only Rossini’s version has stood the test of time and continues to be a mainstay of operatic repertoire. On 11 November 1868, two days before Rossini’s death, the composer Costantino Dall’Argine (1842–1877) premiered an opera based on the same libretto as Rossini’s work,[5] bearing a dedication to Rossini.[6] The premiere was not a failure, but critics condemned the “audacity” of the young composer and the work is now forgotten.[6][7]
Rossini was well known for being remarkably productive, completing an average of two operas per year for 19 years, and in some years writing as many as four. Musicologists believe that, true to form, the music for Il Barbiere di Siviglia was composed in just under three weeks,[8] although the famous overture was actually recycled from two earlier Rossini operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra and thus contains none of the thematic material in Il Barbiere di Siviglia itself.
Performance history
The premiere of Rossini’s opera was a disastrous failure: the audience hissed and jeered throughout, and several on-stage accidents occurred.[8] However, many of the audience were supporters of one of Rossini’s rivals, Giovanni Paisiello, who played on mob mentality to provoke the rest of the audience to dislike the opera.[8] Paisiello had already composed The Barber of Seville and took Rossini’s new version to be an affront to his version. In particular, Paisiello and his followers were opposed to the use of basso buffo, which is common in comic opera.[9] The second performance met with quite a different fate, becoming a roaring success.[8] The original French play, Le Barbier de Séville, endured a similar story: poorly received at first, only to become a favorite within a week.
The opera was first performed in England on 10 March 1818 at the King’s Theatre in London in Italian, soon followed on 13 October at the Covent Garden Theatre by an English version translated by John Fawcett and Daniel Terry. It was first performed in America on 3 May 1819 in English (probably the Covent Garden version) at the Park Theatre in New York.[10] It was given in French at the Théâtre d’Orléans in New Orleans on 4 March 1823,[11] and became the first opera ever to be performed in Italian in New York, when Manuel Garcia (who played Almaviva) and his Italian troupe opened their first season there with Il barbiere on 29 November 1825 at the Park Theatre. The cast of eight had three other members of his family, including the 17-year-old Maria-Felicia, later known as Maria Malibran.[12]
The role of Rosina was originally written for a contralto. According to Richard Osborne, because of its popularity, singers have sometimes distorted Rossini’s intentions. The most serious distortion has been transposition of the role to a higher pitch, “turning her from a lustrous alto into a pert soprano.”[13] In addition, the singing lesson in act 2 has often been turned into “a show-stopping cabaret.”[13] Adelina Patti was known to include Luigi Arditi‘s “Il bacio”, the Bolero from Verdi’s I vespri siciliani, the Shadow Song from Meyerbeer’s Dinorah, and Henry Bishop‘s “Home! Sweet Home!“. Nellie Melba followed suit, accompanying herself on the piano in the final song.[13] Pauline Viardot began the practice of inserting Alabiev‘s “Nightingale”. Maria Callas sang a cut-down version of Rossini’s own “Contro un cor.”
Once after Patti had sung a particularly florid rendition of the opera’s legitimate aria, ‘Una voce poco fa’, Rossini is reported to have asked her: “Very nice, my dear, and who wrote the piece you have just performed?”[14]
As a staple of the operatic repertoire, Barber appears as number nine on the Operabase list of the most-performed operas worldwide.[15] Because of the increasing scarcity of good contraltos,[16] the role of Rosina has most frequently been sung by a coloratura mezzo-soprano (with or without pitch alterations, depending on the singer), and has in the past, and occasionally in more recent times, been sung by coloratura sopranos such as Marcella Sembrich, Maria Callas, Roberta Peters, Gianna D’Angelo, Victoria de los Ángeles, Beverly Sills, Lily Pons, Diana Damrau, Kathleen Battle and Luciana Serra. Famous recent mezzo-soprano Rosinas include Marilyn Horne, Teresa Berganza, Lucia Valentini Terrani, Susanne Marsee, Cecilia Bartoli, Joyce DiDonato, Jennifer Larmore, Elīna Garanča, and Vesselina Kasarova. Famous contralto Rosinas include Ewa Podleś.
Roles
| Role[17] |
Voice type[18] |
Premiere cast, 20 February 1816
(Conductor: Gioachino Rossini) |
| Count Almaviva |
tenor |
Manuel Garcia |
| Bartolo, doctor of medicine, Rosina’s guardian |
bass |
Bartolomeo Botticelli |
| Rosina, rich pupil in Bartolo’s house |
contralto[19] |
Geltrude Righetti-Giorgio |
| Figaro, barber |
baritone[20] |
Luigi Zamboni |
| Basilio, Rosina’s music teacher, hypocrite |
bass |
Zenobio Vitarelli |
| Berta, old governess in Bartolo’s house |
soprano[21] |
Elisabetta Loyselet |
| Fiorello, Almaviva’s servant |
bass[22] |
Paolo Biagelli |
| Ambrogio, Bartolo’s servant |
bass[23] |
|
| Officers, soldiers, policeman, a notary |
