Rossini’s Barber Of Seville opened to catcalls not applause
The opening of Giaochino Rossini’s comic oper a Almaviva, renamed The Barber Of Seville, at Rome’s Teatro Argentina 200 years ago was a disaster.
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A lazy student who would work for only 19 years, Gioachino Rossini saved his energy to pen operas and operettas with the frequency that many others of his time penned letters.
Still, the opening of his comic Almaviva, renamed The Barber Of Seville, at Rome’s Teatro Argentina 200 years ago was a disaster. The jeering audience even added catcalls to their hissing derision after a stray cat ambled onto the stage.
Most of the audience that night in February 1816 were believed to be supporters of Rossini rival Giovanni Paisiello, who had composed a Barber Of Seville opera in 1782 and retaliated by provoking the Rossini crowd.
Rossini had his revenge when the audience at his opera’s second performance in Bologna in August 1816 marched through the streets to cheer outside his house. Rossini’s popular composition, renamed Il barbiere di Siviglia after Paisiello died in June 1816, is still going strong, opening at Sydney Opera House on Thursday.
But it all began when Teatro Argentina impresario Sforza-Cesarini commissioned a Rossini opera on December 15, 1815, for the 1816 Carnival season. In return for 400 scudi and accommodation, Rossini was to complete the first act by January 20, 1816. It is believed Rossini completed the work, based on French author Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais’s 1775 play Le Barbier de Seville, in three weeks, helped by recycling an overture from two of his earlier operas, Aureliano in Palmira and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra.
Born in Pesaro on February 29, 1792, his trumpeter father Giuseppe played in bands and orchestras. His mother, soprano Anna Guidarini, also had regular theatre engagements. Rossini performed with his parents as he learnt to play piano, harpsichord, violin, cello and horn. Although reputedly a lazy student, at 14 in 1806 he entered Bologna’s Philharmonic School and composed his first opera, Demetrio e Polibio, staged in 1812, for tenor Domenico Mombelli and his teenage daughters Ester and Anna.
Unable to continue singing for money after his voice broke, Rossini became an accompanist and conductor. He was also attracted to fashionable opera buffa, or comic opera, composing La cambiale di matrimonio, or The Bill Of Marriage in 1810, performed to modest acclaim in Venice. At Bologna in 1811, he composed the cantata La morte di Didone (The Death Of Dido) for Ester Mombelli, and triumphed with two-act opera buffa L’equivoca stravagante (The Extravagant Misunderstanding).
His opera seria Tancredi, an attempt to rework serious, formulaic 18th century opera, performed at Venice’s La Fenice in February 1813 was an instant success, with its innovative song Di tanti palpiti soon whistled all over the city. After teaching Napoleon’s niece in Bologna, in May 1815 he accepted a commission with Naples impresario Domenico Barbaia, a former cafe waiter who amassed a fortune through gambling and running gaming houses. Barbaia offered Rossini a generous seven-year contract for two operas a year, composed for Barbaia’s contracted Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran. A wealthy heiress, Colbran was also Barbaia’s lover and had acquired a fondness for gambling when Rossini composed her title role in Elisabetta (Elizabeth, Queen Of England) in October 1815.
After his Carnival commission in Rome, Rossini returned to Naples to compose Otello, ossia il Moro di Venezia, with Colbran singing the role of Desdemona, by December 1816. Colbran’s popularity led to extra performances, straining her voice. Rossini’s Naples contract ended with his secret marriage to Colbran in 1822. They moved to Vienna and Bologna, then to London’s King’s Theatre in 1823. As musical director of Theatre des Italiens in Paris in 1824, on an annual salary of £800, Rossini’s popularity secured a lifetime pension from King Charles X for five new operas a year. Despite Colbran’s addiction to gambling as her voice faded, his mother’s death in 1827 and legal action to secure his French pension, Rossini wrote five operas between 1824 and 1829, concluding with the comic Guillaume Tell (William Tell), the last of his 39 operas.
In Paris in 1832 Rossini met courtesan Olympe Pellisier, then 33. Sold at 15 by her mother to a French duke, Pellisier invited Rossini to lunch with her former lover, novelist Honore de Balzac. Refusing to cover gambling debts amassed in Bologne by Colbran, Rossini settled mainly in Paris. Although he continued to compose hymns and instrumental works, it seems a serious bout of gonorrhoea and fatigue-inducing neurasthenia, or perhaps manic depression, prevented him completing more operas.
Rossini and Colbran formally separated in 1837. She died in 1845, when Rossini married Pellisier, who astutely managed his business affairs. Rossini became a popular dinner party host and died in Paris in 1868.
Originally published as Rossini’s Barber Of Seville opened to catcalls not applause
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