Barber of Seville by Miami Lyric Opera
Aug 18 & 19, Aug 18 at 8:00 pm & Aug 19 at 4 pm
Olympia Theater at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts
174 East Flagler Street
Miami , FL 33131
miamilyricopera.org
Music by Gioachino Rossini
Libretto by Cesare Sterbini
The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution (Il barbiere di Siviglia, ossia L’inutile precauzione) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais’s comedy Le Barbier de Séville (1775), which was originally an opéra comique, or a mixture of spoken play with music. The première (under the title Almaviva, or the Futile Precaution) took place on 20 February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina, Rome. It was one of the earliest Italian operas to be performed in America and premiered at the Park Theater in New York City on 29 November 1825.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 buffe; even after two hundred years, its popularity on the modern opera stage attests to that greatness.
