Paris during the Bourbon Restoration "The Barber of Seville", by Gioachino Rossini, at the Théâtre-Italien in 1818, two years after its premiere in Rome. Rossini made modifications for the French audience, changing it from two to four acts and changing Rosina's part from a contralto to a soprano. This new version premiered at the Odeon Theater on 6 May 1824, with Rossini present, and remains today the version most used in opera houses around the world. At the beginning of the Restoration, the Paris Opera was located in the Salle Montansier on rue Richelieu, where the square Louvois is today. On 13 February 1820, the
Gioachino Rossini was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth". The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the arias instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the "secco" recitative was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet. Rossini's most famous opera was produced on 20 February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The libretto, a version of Beaumarchais' stage play "Le Barbier de Séville", was newly written by Cesare