Boston Lyric Opera Boston Lyric Opera Boston Lyric Opera (BLO) is an American opera company based in Boston, Massachusetts, founded in 1976. In the 2018-2019 season, Boston Lyric Opera will produce "The Barber of Seville", "Schoenberg in Hollywood"; "The Rape of Lucretia"; and the east coast premiere of Poul Ruder's "The Handmaid's Tale". "The Barber of Seville", Gioachino Rossini's celebrated classic, will be performed from October 12th-21st at the Cutler Majestic Theatre and directed by Rosetta Cucchi, with Argentine mezzo-soprano Daniela Mack as the feisty Rosina. As a part of BLO's new work commissioning program, the world-premiere of Tod Machover and Simon Robson's
Gioachino Rossini History of Western Music", "Rossini's fame surpassed that of any previous composer, and so, for a long time, did the popularity of his works. Audiences took to his music as if to an intoxicating drug—or, to put it more decorously, to champagne, with which Rossini's bubbly music was constantly compared." Rossini took existing operatic genres and forms and perfected them in his own style. Through his own work, as well as through that of his followers and imitators, Rossini's style dominated Italian opera throughout the first half of the 19th century. In his compositions, Rossini plagiarized freely from himself, a