The Barber of Seville - Student Guide

Gioacchino Rossini

Il Barbiere di siviglia

The Washington Opera’s Student Guide to the Student Matinee

Set near Seville, Spain, in the late eighteenth century ct I

Count Almaviva has hired a band to sweetly serenade Rosina under her balcony. When she remains inside her room, the Count, is offended and kicks the musicians out of the square. While in the square, the Count bumps into his servant Figaro. Figaro explains that he has a hand in managing Dr. Bartolo’s household and that Rosina is Dr. Bartolo’s ward, not daughter, like the Count thought. After a brief discussion Figaro agrees to help the Count win Rosina, as long as he is well paid for the job. While they are chatting, Rosina walks out onto her balcony with a note for the Count. She realizes that her guardian, Dr. Bartolo, is following her and drops the note to the ground for the Count to find. Dr. Bartolo brings her back into the house and the Count gets the note. He reads that Rosina is definitely interested, but

she wants to know more about him. While he and Figaro are trying to decide what to do, Bartolo runs out of the house shouting that he is going to marry Rosina. Acting fast, Figaro throws the Count his guitar and tells him to sing to Rosina, saying that he is a poor student named Lindoro and is Figaro’s cousin. The Count wants Rosina to love him for him, not his money and title. The plan works and Rosina is swept away.

Meanwhile, Figaro thinks the Count can get into Dr. Bartolo’s house if he acts like a drunken soldier who needs a room. Scene Two opens with Rosina alone in the courtyard, trying to figure out a way to get rid of Dr. Bartolo. Helpful Figaro comes wandering up, followed by Bartolo, who is complaining because Figaro’s “cold remedies” have made his staff sick. Don Basilio, the music teacher and marriage broker, drops in to tell Bartolo that Count Almaviva, whose love for Rosina is well known to everyone, is in town. Dr. Bartolo is upset and tells Basilio that he needs to get married as soon as possible. Basilio agrees, as long as he gets more money. Figaro eavesdrops on Basilio and Dr. Bartolo then tells Rosina everything the two men said. He also makes Rosina give him a letter he can give to “his cousin,” aka Count Almaviva, so he knows she is still interested.

Figaro leaves and Dr. Bartolo enters and gives

Rosina the third degree about why her hands have ink on them, why a sheet of paper is missing, and why her pen is sharpened. Dr. Bartolo sees through her excuses and locks her in her room. As soon as he leaves, the Count, dressed as the drunken soldier, shows up at the door. Figaro’s brilliant plan would have worked, but Dr. Bartolo is exempt from housing troops. Rosina escapes and runs downstairs to see “Lindoro” and gets a letter from him that she lies about and tells Dr. Bartolo is the laundry list! At this point, Figaro comes in and sees what is going on. He is followed by real soldiers who are about to arrest the Count until they realize who he is.

ct Two

Our hero, the Count, is disguised as Don Alonso, supposedly filling in for the sick Don Basilio, Rosina’s music teacher. To convince Dr. Bartolo of his loyalty, Don Alonso gives him a letter supposedly written by the Count, which says that the Count has been unfaith-

ful to Rosina. The two lovebirds go through with the “music lesson,” and Dr. Bartolo falls asleep in a chair until Figaro arrives to give him a shave. Figaro creates a diversion and swipes the window key so that Rosina and the Count can escape that evening. Unfortunately, Dr. Bartolo figures out the plan and ruins it, yet again. Around this time, the perfectly healthy Basilio shows up and claims that Alonso is really the Count. Dr. Bartolo sends Basilio off for a notary so the marriage can take place immediately and shows Rosina the letter from Count. She is fooled into thinking that Lindoro doesn’t love her and stupidly tells Bartolo everything. That night, the Count and Figaro show up to take her away but they find her upset with Lindoro. The Count has to explain his dual identity to calm her down; Figaro, meanwhile, discovers that the escape ladder is gone so the trio has to hide. They only come out when Basilio returns with the notary. The Count persuades Basilio to let the notary marry him and Rosina. Dr. Bartolo appears, but he realizes that he is no match for the Count. The Count offers Dr. Bartolo a large dowry for Rosina. The two marry and live happily ever after.

Who’s Who in the Opera

Count Almaviva Ahl – mah – VEE - vah (tenor) is a handsome, rich Spanish count pretending to be a poor student named Lindoro Leen – DOH – roh so he can marry …

Rosina Roh – SEE – nah (mezzo-soprano or soprano), an attractive, young woman with a large dowry who lives with…

Dr. Bartolo Bahr – TOH – loh (bass), her overprotective guardian who wants to marry her for her money. He employs

Figaro FEE – ga – roh (baritone), a barber and jack of all trades.

Don Basilio Dohn Ba – SEE – lyo (bass) is the marriage broker and Rosina’s music teacher, and

Berta Behr – tah (mezzo-soprano), the maid, is fed up with everyone’s crazy behavior!!

The Playwright

The Composer

Gioacchino Rossini (1792 – 1868)

Italian born composer Gioacchino Rossini is probably best known for his Il Barbiere di Siviglia, though he completed 39 operas in his life and a significant number of religious compositions. He grew up in a musical family, the son of an opera singer and horn player. He lived a long life, but Rossini retired in his thirties, no small feat for a man who needed lots of money to support his admittedly hedonistic lifestyle. Rossini loved all things luxurious, growing rather fat in his old age and marrying twice. He spent his life in Italy and France, enjoying fame and success wherever he went. He is legendary for his wit, laziness, and, paradoxically, for his facility in rapid composition. He is said to have finished The Barber of Seville in only 13 days! While some of his operas are not included in the standard repertoire, The Barber of Seville became immensely popular, eliciting much praise from other composers, including Verdi and Wagner.

Pierre Augustin Caron Beaumarchais (1732 – 1799)

Parisian Pierre Augustin Caron Beaumarchais was adept in many fields, like the fictional Figaro. During his life, he worked, as a clockmaker, lawyer, playwright, musician, gunrunner and secret agent! His satirical trio of plays, Le Barbier de Seville ou La Precaution inutile, La Folle Journee ou Le Mariage de Figaro, and La Mere Coupable were very popular; they dealt with subjects such as relationships between the nobility and servants, that were distinctly offensive to the crown. So offensive, in fact, that Le Barbier de Seville was banned from the French stage in 1773 by Louis XV. Nevertheless, his comedies provided excellent characters and confilicts for opera; the plots were snapped up by Mozart for the famous Le Nozze di Figaro and by Paisiello and later, Rossini, for Il Barbiere di Siviglia. Beaumarchais was an active participant in the French Revolution and died in 1799 from a heart attack.

Did you know?

On its opening night, The Barber of Seville was a complete flop! It opened on February 20, 1816 in the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The audience was filled with angry supporters of composer Giovanni Paisiello, who had already written an opera on The Barber of Seville. It was the custom that groups of people who did not like a composer or singer would gather in the audience to shout and disrupt the performance. To top that off, the performer who was singing Bartolo tripped over something as he was going on the stage and had to deal with a bloody nose for the whole rest of the performance! Finally, a random cat wandered on stage towards the end of the opera. Someone tried to throw it off, but it came back. The audience thought it was hilarious and started meowing at the cast. The next time the opera was performed, it was received very well. The audience realized the opera’s greatness and remained enthralled until the end.

Musical Highlights

The music in The Barber of Seville, paired with an excellent libretto, served to make the opera exciting and appealing to audiences. The opera contains wonderful examples of Rossini’s composition conventions. A few paragraphs cannot cover the entire opera, but here are some highlights.

One reason for the opera’s rapid composition in only 13 days, was that Rossini borrowed music from his other works. In fact, the entire overture was used in two previous operas. The Count’s first act aria, “Ecco ridente in ciela” (Gently the dawn is breaking), was added to the opera after the first performance; adapted from a chorus in his oratorio, Ciro in Babilonia (Cyrus in Babylon). The elaborate ornamentation of the fundamentally lyric vocal line is an excellent example of Bel Canto (It., beautiful singing) composition popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Composers of Bel Canto include Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini.

Figaro’s rousing entrance aria “Largo al factotum” (I am the factotum of all the town!) is familiar to audiences world-wide. The word factotum, spelled the same in Italian and English, refers to an employee or assistant who has a wide range of capabilities. The famous lines “Figaro, Figaro” even hit it big in the cartoons with Bugs Bunny’s “What’s Opera Doc?”! This aria is a cavatina. The term cavatina developed as the diminutive of cavata, which describes a short aria without repetition. The form became popular in the 18th century, but 19th century composers including Rossini, Weber, and Gounod continued to use the term, but changed the meaning to define the elaborate arias sung during the principal singers’ first entrances. Using this definition, Rosina’s “Una voce poco fa” (the opening lines can be loosely translated as “A little while ago a voice resounded in my heart”) is also a cavatina.

Basilio’s “La Calunnia” aria in Act II has an enormous orchestral crescendo, Rossini’s trademark! The aria outlines his crafty plan to deceive Rosina and get rid of her suitor. The aria’s title translates into English as “The Calumny”. A calumny is a false statement used to hurt someone; doing so makes one guilty of slander. The aria describes how whispered rumor swells into a frenzied scandal that destroys its victim. The music depicts the metaphor in the orchestra with repetition of a four-bar phrase that grows from piano to forte, slowly adds instruments to include the whole orchestra, and the pitches move higher and higher. The progression ends only to punctuate the height of the drama and to introduce new images of the victim’s suffering. The aria incredible pairing of words and music gives the audience tremendous insight into Don Basilio and his chacter.

Dowries

A dowry is money or property brought by a bride to her husband through their marriage. Dowries have been a part of the marriage ceremony and contract for centuries. They usually applied to upper middle class or upper class families. In some countries today brides are still expected to have a dowry. In many cases, men would search for the best dowry and then marry the girl for her money, property or goods. An upper-middle class girl would work until she was of marriageable age (usually 14 or 15), building her dowry of household necessities such as sheets and comforters. In the opera, Rosina had a large dowry which motivated Dr. Bartolo to want to marry her.

Billeting

Billeting is the use of civilian homes for housing military troops. Governments were forced into this practice in the 17th and 18th centuries, because of the lack of living quarters for soldiers. The law stated that if a soldier appeared at your door, he had to be given a room for the night. This was true, unless, of course, the family was of some importance or had paid a fee, thus gaining an exemption, as was the case with Dr. Bartolo in the opera. The practice of billeting was not only present in Europe. In America, during the Revolutionary War, colonists were forced to open their homes to British troops, causing much unrest and eventually leading to The Quartering Act of 1774. This act exempted colonists from having to house the enemy. Fortunately, billeting has been eliminated from army practices, so families can sleep soundly at night without worring about the arrival of sudden guests!

Class Issues

Issues of class were terribly important and rigidly respected during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. They were especially important before the French Revolution, a fight that took a huge step towards securing rights for the lower classes. Monarchical paranoia surrounding fear of lower class and bourgeoisie, middle class, control manifested itself in many ways, one of which was the banning of works thought to be conducive to rebellious thoughts. This was the case with the subject matter of Beaumarchais’s plays. Once composers were able to get a hold of the plays, they swiftly contributed to the problem, giving servants important roles with long arias and allowing libretti that supported the depiction of servants as smarter, more moral, and generally more attractive than upper class characters.

Europe at the Time of the Opera

Europe, during the 1800’s, was not one of the most stable places you could imagine. There is an old expression, “when France sneezes, Europe catches a cold.” This was certainly true – France had just experienced the French Revolution, efficiently ending the control of the “ancient regime” in Europe. This ancient regime, a symbol of the undisputed power of the wealthier classes, was entirely subservient to the monarchy. The monarchy was concerned about the growing power of the bourgeoisie, the middle class, even before the Revolution. This worry caused Louis XV to ban Beaumarchais’ Le Marriage de Figaro and Le Barbier de Seville from appearing on the French stage for fear the plays’ negative treatment of the nobility would incite peasant riots in the city. Although able to control this danger, he could not handle the course of events that would lead to the Revolution. The radicalism of the last stages, however, caused a violent backlash towards Conservatism, opening the way for Napoleon to attain supreme control of

France and other of the surrounding countries. His defeat at Waterloo led to the almost Reactionary Congress of Vienna, headed by the severe Austrian Metternich. Europe was divided with the Austrian Hapsburgs getting control over most of the area. At that time, Italy was composed of independent city-states. Austria gained control of Venetia and Lombardy, two cities located towards the north of the country. Spain was left under the restored Bourbon monarch, Ferdinand VII. In less than half a century, war would erupt again between various parties and Prussian Chancellor Bismarck’s complicated system of alliances would contribute to the beginning of World War I. So the period between when Beaumarchais wrote Le Barbier de Seville and Rossini’s opera premiered was not exactly peaceful. The tensions of Europe can be seen in the events that surround the story’s creation, rendering The Barber of Seville historically as well as musically significant.

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Art direction by Troy L. Marsh Jr.

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