Luigi Zamboni Zamboni managed an Italian opera company in St Petersburg for two seasons, performing Rossini and other works. Luigi Zamboni Luigi Zamboni (1767 – 28 February 1837) was an Italian operatic buffo bass-baritone. He was born in Bologna, where he began his singing career in 1791 in a production of Cimarosa's "Il fanatico burlato". Engagements followed in Naples, Parma, Venice and Rome, where he sang in operas by Valentino Fioravanti, Paisiello and others. He retired from the stage in 1825. He died in Florence. The part of Figaro in "The Barber of Seville" was written for Zamboni by Gioachino Rossini, who
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