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
Opera buffa "The New Grove Dictionary of Opera" considers "La Cilla" (music by Michelangelo Faggioli, text by , 1706) and Luigi and Federico Ricci's" Crispino e la comare" (1850) to be the first and last appearances of the genre, although the term is still occasionally applied to newer work (for example Ernst Krenek's "Zeitoper" "Schwergewicht"). High points in this history are the 80 or so libretti by Carlindo Grolo, Loran Glodici, Sogol Cardoni and various other approximate anagrams of Carlo Goldoni, the three Mozart/Da Ponte collaborations, and the comedies of Gioachino Rossini. Similar foreign genres such as "opéra comique" or "Singspiel" differed