Arizona Opera Arizona Opera Arizona Opera is an opera company which operates in both Phoenix and Tucson, Arizona. Arizona Opera was established in 1971 as the Tucson Opera Company, under founding general director James P. Sullivan, and presented its first production, of Rossini's "The Barber of Seville", in 1972. By 1976 the company had expanded to include performances in both Tucson and Phoenix. Arizona Opera is now permanently headquartered in Phoenix. The company has a subscriber base of approximately 10,000 drawn from the two metropolitan areas, and an annual expenditure of $5.8 million, according to the company's 2011 IRS Form 990. The
The Barber of Seville (Paisiello) Paisiello, but Paisiello's comic opera was the first to achieve widespread success. It was subsequently staged in several cities in the years immediately following its premiere, including Vienna, where "Il barbiere" played at five venues from 1783 until 1804, both in Italian and German, and received nearly 100 performances, and Naples (1783); Warsaw, Prague, Versailles (1784); Cassel, Bratislava, Mannheim (1785); Liège, Cologne (1786); Madrid and Barcelona (1787); for the 1787 production in Naples at the Teatro dei Fiorentini, the opera was reduced to three acts and Pasiello wrote three new numbers: "La carta che bramate" for Rosina, "Serena il bel