“The Barber of Seville” debuted just over 200 years ago in Rome. The opera played to a jeering audience, a staged event where adherents of the composer Giovanni Paisiello – whose own version of the opera, “Il barbiere di Siviglia, ovvero La precauzione inutile” had pleased operagoers 20 years earlier – packed the house and catcalled throughout the premiere performance. Their objective was to defend the memory of their maestro’s earlier work that they felt was the definitive version.
But the Paisiello mob couldn’t show up every night, and upon the conclusion of the second evening’s undisturbed performance the response from the audience was ecstatic – they adored it so much that a large group of the crowd took to the streets with torches and made their way to Rossini’s home to cheer him in person. And a hit was born. Incredibly, for someone who writes about opera, I didn’t know the entire story of “Barber” until the final curtain of this performance.
But I like the fact that I am sometimes ignorant of operatic plots because seeing and hearing a classic work of music for the first time is like breaking the shrink wrap on an LP you’ve never heard, putting the disk on the turntable, and experiencing it as if you were living in the time it was created. It’s a special thing. Even more special when you can take yourself not just back to 1988 with an unopened virgin vinyl of Lovesexy, but back 200 years ago into post-Napoleonic Europe for an essential c.
