Gioachino Rossini (1792 – 1868): The Barber of Seville
Most fortunate of men Indeed you are... Ready for everything By night or by day Always in bustle In constant motion...– Figaro, The Barber of Seville
The theatre was in Gioachino Rossini’s lifeblood. Born in the small Adriatic city of Pesaro, some of his earliest memories were of touring with his musician parents from town to town, as they sought work in local operatic productions. Rossini senior was a French horn player (and occasional abattoir inspector), while his soprano wife was a competent seconda donna, despite no formal training.
From the age of six, Gioachino was allowed to play triangle in one of his parents’ bands (he would later graduate to viola). He learned piano, French horn and cello, and was even for a time considered a prospective singer. Showing great promise, he was sent to the Bologna Conservatorio at the age of 15. There he rebelled against the institution’s diet of strict, dry counterpoint, much preferring to study the scores of Mozart and Haydn instead – his devotion to Mozart would particularly influence many of his earlier operas*. After graduating from the Conservatorio, he found work in local theatres, before his first opera was performed in Venice in 1810, the one act farce, La Cambiale di Matrimonio (The Marriage Contract). It’s generally thought that the immediate success of La Cambiale saved Rossini from being conscripted into Napoleon’s army, which was at that time about to embark on its disastrous Russian expedition. A local prince managed to secure the young composer’s exemption from a campaign that would claim the lives of three quarters of its participants.
*Rossini would later say: “I take Beethoven twice a week, Haydn four times, but Mozart every day… Mozart is always adorable.”
As if determined to make the most of this reprieve, Rossini worked prodigiously hard to establish himself, producing no less than thirty operas over the next ten years. After scoring his first major hit with L’Inganno Felice (The Fortunate Deception) in 1812, the commissions started to fly in thick and fast. In 1813 he enjoyed his first real international successes, with both his opera seria, Tancredi, and his first masterly opera buffa, L’italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers). His reputation soared and by the age of 23, Gioachino Rossini was already, incredibly, one of Europe’s most famous composers.
There were inevitable detractors, more senior figures in the opera world who felt that some kind of skulduggery lay behind Rossini’s meteoric rise. The effortless fluency of his early scores left him open to all kinds of charges – of superficiality, backward technique, ungrammatical musicality and various felonies against the principles of harmony. Rossini’s response was to remind his detractors about the terms of engagement for a young opera composer. “I should not have so many faults to reproach myself with if I had leisure to read my manuscript twice over; but you know every well that scarcely six weeks are allowed me to compose an Opera.” Rossini added that he often composed a “duo or air” each morning, which would then be “rehearsed that very evening” (although he also claimed to be able to write an aria in as little as four minutes).
Just possibly it was Rossini’s whole creative process that most annoyed his critics. His methods were rarely sacrosanct. He was never one to wait for divine inspiration, or to agonize over instrumental balance or the shape of a certain theme. It was partly that he possessed an almost uncanny ability to judge such things to near perfection first time around, but some of it was also his extrovert personality. As the early nineteenth century French novelist, Stendahl*, suggested of him, “Figure to yourself a quick and ardent mind, susceptible of every impression, and capable of turning to advantage the most trifling occurrence or passing observation.” The young Rossini’s way of creating an opera could be a chaotic, at times positively riotous affair, frequently bringing him into intimate contact with the community he was writing the work for and its various layers of humanity.
*The Italophilic Stendahl would write a highly entertaining and anecdotal memoir of Rossini in 1824, at a time when the composer was still barely thirty years old.
As opera directors queued up to engage Italy’s new musical star, Rossini would receive commissions from almost every major Italian city between 1810 and 1816. Far from being able to work remotely, every commission required an extended stay in its respective city, usually for several months. Rossini would thus arrive, be received with a clamour of appreciation from the local impresario, plus theatre managers and townsfolk (his reputation by now preceding him) and then proceed to spend the next few weeks socializing, dining out and drinking liberally, doing little in the way of actual work, aside from screwing his nose up at the libretto which the impresario had pushed in his direction: “you give me verses but not situations,” he would complain. Gradually Rossini would get to know the (often variable) performers assembled for him, adapting his formative musical ideas to the capabilities of each singer. Having once discovered a soprano who had one very good note and many somewhat less good, Rossini simply arranged for her to repeat the good note many times while the orchestra filled in the rest of her melody.
With a tight deadline looming, Rossini would eventually attempt to get down to work, even as his social engagements showed no signs of calming. He still spent most evenings partying, only getting back to his lodgings in the small hours, at which point he would somehow find the inspiration for many of his best ideas. These he would hastily scratch down on manuscript before working out their instrumentation in the more sober light of morning.
Still people hammered mercilessly on his door, eager to meet the young maestro (rather like Figaro: “all call for me / all want me / ladies and children / old men and maidens…”). Sometimes his impromptu visitors might furnish him with a useful idea, such as the Jewish man who suggested giving a nasal twang to a certain Hebrew chorus Rossini was working on, as they apparently sang that way in his local synagogue. Others could be tiresome, offering up stuffy theories or sycophantic compliments: Rossini would respond with disarming pranks, or else answer the door to them dressed up in an outrageous costume, such as a classical Greek warrior. Rich, unhappily married woman would show up unannounced, sometimes more than one at a time, and throw themselves into his arms. More often than not, Gioachino Rossini got no peace at all, and his lodgings could be a picture of mild anarchy. There were times when he must have felt he was living in one of his own comic operas.
Not entirely surprisingly, each work would be composed up to the very last minute. He once joked that “nothing primes inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a copyist waiting for your work or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios in Italy were bald at thirty.” Such an existence might have been exhausting, and yet it was one Rossini was always equal to – indeed his creativity appeared to thrive on it.
This still relatively early and exuberant period of Rossini’s career would culminate in one of his crowning achievements, as Rome came calling with a commission in the winter of 1816. At the time, there were strict prohibitions in the city for any libretti with “political allusions”, and in desperation a local impresario unearthed the 1775 comedy, Il Barbiere di Sevilglia, as Rossini’s storyline.
The second part of this trilogy (by playwright and polymath, Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais) had already been made into an opera by Mozart thirty years earlier as the Marriage of Figaro, although Mozart’s music was still not that well known in Italy. More famous to Italians of that time was the first part of Beaumarchais’ comedy, which had been operatized by the once very popular Giovanni Paisiello: this work was in fact the original Barber of Seville. Rossini knew it might put backs up to set it again, even though he had a new librettist to rewrite the story, and he contacted the elderly Paisiello to explain the circumstances, promising that they would tactfully change the title. Paisiello gave his lukewarm consent but seethed inwardly.
The premiere was set for February 20th*, and the normally ebullient Rossini was uncharacteristically tense beforehand, perhaps sensing the trouble that lay ahead. In the event the first night was a disaster. A mob of Paisiello loyalists (possibly whipped up by the old composer himself) descended on the theatre and made all manner of trouble, with continuous catcalls, booing and hissing. Several accidents did little to help the performance, with characters falling over in places they shouldn’t, while the action was further disrupted by an unexpected, unscripted cameo from a meowing cat. At the end of the performance, the unruly mob were chanting Paisiello’s name at sufficient volume to drown out all other applause. Rossini was so spooked by the hostile reaction that the following evening he refused to take his place at the theatre. When he later heard an animated crowd descending on his lodgings, he cowered behind his door. In fact, it was the second night audience, all cheering his name: the opera had been heard in respectful silence and this time had been a great success.
*Rossini would claim to write the 150-minute work in a whirlwind twelve days. When Rossini’s later rival, Gaetano Donizetti, came to hear of this feat he joked, “Rossini always was a lazy fellow.”
Rossini’s Barber of Seville (it would soon after revert to its original title) has since come to be regarded as one of the very finest of opera buffas. The plot is trivial and absurd, but often hilarious – two men, one of them a tyrannical doctor, the other a likeable but slightly buffoonish count, fight for the hand of a young woman. There is plotting and subterfuge: the dashing young barber and “factotum”, Figaro, is employed as the count’s right-hand man. There are several disguises, usually worn by the count (at various times impersonating a poor student, drunken soldier and assistant priest) in order to gain illicit entry to the house of the beloved. There are meta-musical numbers – arias with onstage guitar accompaniments, singing lessons, operatic arias within operatic arias. You can probably guess the outcome, but the opera is a near endless delight of bright, colourful scoring, catchy melodies, lively action and with just enough pathos to draw our emotional engagement. Did I mention it is also very, very funny?
Giuseppe Verdi, one of Rossini’s great operatic successors, would later pay tribute to the work: “I cannot help thinking that Il barbiere di Siviglia, for the abundance of true musical ideas, for its comic verve and the accuracy of its declamation, is the most beautiful opera buffa there is.” Rossini was also savvy enough to recognize its strengths. Towards the end of his life he would say, “One thing I believe I can assure you: that of my works, the second act of Guglielmo Tell, the third act of Otello, and all of il Barbiere di Seviglia will certainly endure.”
Life must have seemed pretty good to Rossini as he finally left Rome that spring, on his way to his next job in Naples. Could he have felt a little like his own Sevillian barber?
I am the factotum of the city.
Ah! ah! what a happy life!
Little fatigue, and much amusement,
Always with some money
In my pocket,
Noble fruition of my reputation!
The in-demand, ubiquitous, playful, versatile and durable man for all seasons: not Figaro, but the young Giochanni Rossini.
Suggestions for Further Listening
For a full recording of the The Barber of Seville I would look no further than this wonderfully performed and beautifully filmed production (with English subtitles) from the Zurich Opera House in 2001.
Although Rossini admitted in later life, “I really felt more aptitude for opera buffa”, his opera serie (such as his Otello, written around the same time as the Barber) were just as influential in his day, even if they have been less performed since. Later nineteenth century opera composers such as Verdi, Meyerbeer, Offenbach and Wagner all felt some debt to Rossini’s opera seria.
It would be remiss not to mention the Barber‘s older cousin, the Marriage of Figaro (1786) – Mozart’s equally delightful take on the second part of the Figaro trilogy, involving many of the same characters.