Review: Rossini's The Barber of Seville

You will leave the opera house in laughter!

Opera is not always the over-the-top music and acting that involves mystical characters or the death of the soprano. At times, it will be over-the-top comedy! So, if you really need a starter into opera, then this one is for you! This opera, Il barbiere di Siviglia, was composed by no other than Gioachino Rossini with the libretto written by Cesare Sterbini based on Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s Le Barbier de Séville. The basic premise of this two-act opera buffa is that the barber of the town, Figaro, helps Count Almaviva get married to a woman by the name of Rosina who is held up in the home of Bartolo, her guardian, in the most comedic way possible. It is the opera featuring the greatest amount of bamboozling in every possible way.

Music wise, the overture of this opera alone has been ingrained in mainstream culture, plus the aria Largo al factorum at the beginning of first act. Rossini’s depiction of the comedy just further intensifies the absurdity of the plot in every scene. Everyone in the cast has their time to elicit laughter from the audience. Another good thing from this work as a whole is that it is of reasonable length, just around the two-and-a-half-hour mark. Act 1 contains most of the action while Act 2 is just tying up the bamboozling. So, if you want to introduce your friends to opera, this one definitely needs to be the first choice!

Here is a 1972 film of the whole opera under the baton of Claudio Abbado: