Language: Italian
Subtitles: English, French, German, Spanish

The Barber of Seville is Gioachino Rossini's best-known opera, set to a libretto by Cesare Sterbini, premiered in 1816 and considered by many to be the masterpiece of Italian opera-bouffe. The story was taken from the comedy The Barber of Seville or the Useless Precaution by Beaumarchais (1732-1799), first performed at the Théâtre-Français on February 23, 1775, one of the three plays by this author included among his heroes the character of Figaro.

The Barber of Seville (Italian: Il Barbiere di Siviglia) is an opera buffa in two acts with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini, which was based on Pierre Beaumarchais's French comedy The Barber of Seville (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.

It has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as the opera buffa of all "opere buffe". After two hundred years, it remains a popular work.

Rossini's opera recounts the events of the first of the three plays by French playwright Pierre Beaumarchais that revolve around the clever and enterprising character named Figaro, the barber of the title. Mozart's opera The Marriage of Figaro, composed 30 years earlier in 1786, is based on the second part of the Beaumarchais trilogy. The first Beaumarchais play was originally conceived as an opéra comique, but was rejected as such by the Comédie-Italienne.

Rossini was well known for being remarkably productive, completing an average of two operas per year for 19 years, and in some years writing as many as four. Musicologists believe that, true to form, the music for Il barbiere di Siviglia was composed in just under three weeks, although the famous overture was actually recycled from two earlier Rossini operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elizabeth, Queen of England and thus contains none of the thematic material in Il barbiere di Siviglia itself.

Director: Jonathan Nott (Music Director), Sam Brown (Director)
Cast: Orchestra de la Suisse Romande, Bogdan Mihai (Il Conte di Almaviva), Bruno Taddia (Figaro), Lena Belkina (Rosina), Bruno de Simone (Bartolo), Marco Spotti (Basilio), Mary Feminear (Berta), Rodrigo Garcia (Fiorello), Aleksandar Chaveev (Ufficiale), Peter Baekeun Cho (Ambrogio), Choir of the Grand Theater