The Barber of Seville (1948 film) The Barber of Seville (1948 film) The Barber of Seville (French: Le Barbier de Séville) is a French film directed by Jean Loubignac released in 1948. It is a screen version of the 1816 opera by Rossini based on the play by Beaumarchais (in the translation by Castil-Blaze). Filmed at the Billancourt Studios it uses the Théâtre national de l'Opéra-Comique production of the time. It was filmed in 1947, released in May 1948, and lasts around 95 minutes. The opera had been seen at all the principal lyric theatres in Paris; at the Salle Favart it had been performed over
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