The Barber of Seville The Barber of Seville The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution ( ) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy "Le Barbier de Séville" (1775). The première of Rossini's opera (under the title "Almaviva, o sia L'inutile precauzione") took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina, Rome, with designs by Angelo Toselli. Rossini's "Barber" has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opere
Gioachino Rossini the rest of the score in 1841. The success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera, but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to his death in 1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives—the life of swift triumph and the long life of seclusion, of which biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish mongering, his mask of humility and indifference. In 1839 Rossini was appointed director of the Liceo Musicale di Bologna where among his pupils was contralto Marietta Alboni. His first