The Classical Music Book

148

See also: Le bourgeois gentilhomme 70–71 ■ The Magic Flute 134 –137 ■

La traviata 174 –175 ■ Tosca 194 –197

S

urviving a disastrous first

night in Rome in 1816,

Il barbiere di Siviglia (The

Barber of Seville) by Gioachino

Rossini quickly won universal

acclaim. Rossini had already

written 16 operas, but this was his

first opera buffa (“comic opera”) as

opposed to an opera seria (“serious

opera”). It relates the attempts of

the Count Almaviva to win the

beautiful Rosina, ward of the much

older Dr. Bartolo, who intends to

marry her himself. Central to

the plot is the barber Figaro, a

“fixer” in Seville. Its songs include

Figaros’s “Largo al factotum della

città” (“Make way for the factotum

of the city”) and Rosina’s “Una voce

poco fa” (“A voice has just”).

Operatic realism

The low-life settings and street

language of the opera buffa brought

fresh realism to musical drama, and

its popularity spread throughout

Europe. Mozart’s The Marriage of

Figaro and Così fan tutte are other

examples of the comic opera genre.

Beethoven admired The Barber

of Seville, as did Verdi and Wagner.

Yet, apart from a one-act farce,

Rossini wrote no other comedies.

In the 1820s, he became director

of the Théâtre Italien, in Paris,

where he wrote five more operas,

culminating in Guillaume Tell

(William Tell) in 1829. After this,

his output declined. One of his few

large-scale pieces in the last three

decades of his life was his Petite

messe solennelle (“small solemn

mass”) of 1863. ■

IN CONTEXT

FOCUS

Italian opera buffa

BEFORE

1782 An earlier operatic

version of Il barbiere di Siviglia

(The Barber of Seville) by the

Italian composer Giovanni

Paisiello is performed for the

first time in St. Petersburg.

1786 Moza rt’s The Marriage

of Figaro receives its first

performance in Vienna.

AFTER

1843 Gaetano Donizetti’s

comic opera Don Pasquale is

performed for the first time at

the Théâtre Italien in Paris.

1850 Crispino e la comare

(“The cobbler and the fairy”)

by the brothers Luigi and

Federico Ricci is one of the last

examples of true opera buffa.

GIVE ME A LAUNDRY

LIST, AND I WILL

SET IT TO MUSIC

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE (1816),

GIOACHIN0 ROSSINI

Dear God, here it is finished,

this poor little Mass. Is this

sacred music ... or music of

the devil? I was born for opera

buffa, as you well know.

Gioachino Rossini

US_148-149_Rossini_Weber.indd 148 26/03/18 1:00 PM