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 use of an exciting buildup of orchestral sound over a repeated phrase, which is now commonly known as a "Rossini crescendo". Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history. Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy that was then part of the Papal States. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomed Napoleon's troops when they arrived