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 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