The Barber of Seville The most serious distortion has been the upward transposition of the role of Rosina, turning her from a lustrous alto into a pert soprano." However, it has also been noted that Rossini, who frequently altered his music for specific singers, wrote a new aria for the second act for Joséphine Fodor-Mainvielle, a soprano who had sung Rosina in the 1818 London premiere, and sang the new aria c. 1820 at the Théâtre-Italien in Paris, where it was published. The singing lesson in act 2 has often been turned into "a show-stopping cabaret." Adelina Patti was known to include Luigi Arditi's
Victoria State Opera rivalled those of the Australian Opera given in the same space. At its height, the VSO had over 13,000 season subscribers. In 1985 Brian Stacey was appointed as Head of Music. Other notable production highlights include appearances by Suzanne Steele, most notably in the lead role of "La belle Hélène" and as Eurydice in "Orpheus in the Underworld". There were also "Don Giovanni", "Tannhäuser", "The Pearl Fishers" (which toured to Sydney), "The Tales of Hoffmann", "Faust", "Aida", "Il trovatore", "The Barber of Seville", "The Magic Flute", "Andrea Chénier", "Turandot", "Madama Butterfly" (the traditional production by Andrew Sinclair or the Ken