The Barber of Seville 1823, 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. The role of Rosina was originally written for a contralto. According to music critic Richard Osborne, writing in "The New Grove Dictionary of Opera", "it is important to record the degree to which singers have sometimes distorted Rossini’s intentions.
The Marriage of Figaro employer Count Almaviva to seduce Susanna and teaching him a lesson in fidelity. The opera is a cornerstone of the repertoire and appears consistently among the top ten in the Operabase list of most frequently performed operas. Beaumarchais's earlier play "The Barber of Seville" had already made a successful transition to opera in a version by Paisiello. Beaumarchais's "Mariage de Figaro" was at first banned in Vienna; Emperor Joseph II stated that "since the piece contains much that is objectionable, I therefore expect that the Censor shall either reject it altogether, or at any rate have such alterations made in