The Barber of Seville (Paisiello) dal francese, da rappresentarsi nel Teatro Imperiale del corte, l'anno 1782"" (Trans: "The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution, comical drama with music freely translated from the French, presented at the Imperial Court Theater, the year 1782") The story essentially follows the original Beaumarchais play, and in some places directly translates songs and dialogue. The plots of the Paisiello and the Rossini versions very closely resemble each other, with subtle differences. Petrosellini's libretto puts a greater emphasis on the love story and less on the comic qualities. Several musical adaptations of "Il barbiere di Siviglia" predated the version by
Gioachino Rossini life. During his Paris years, Rossini created the comic operas "Il viaggio a Reims" and "Le comte Ory" and the grand opera "Guillaume Tell" ("William Tell"). The production of the latter in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. Fabio Luisi said that Rossini planned for "Guillaume Tell" to be his last opera even as he composed it. He was thirty-eight years old and had already composed thirty-eight operas. "Guillaume Tell" was a political epic adapted from Schiller's play "Wilhelm Tell" (1804) about the 13th-century Swiss patriot who rallied his country against the Austrians. The