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 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