Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro, in 1792, to an impoverished couple who made their living as musicians on the fringe of musical life as it was known then. His father was the town trumpeter, a position which for the most part involved appearances at various civic and church ceremonies. His mother was a seamstress and a singer who appeared in productions at various provincial opera houses near Pesaro. For a time during Rossini’s childhood, both parents traveled around North Central Italy performing in opera, he in the orchestra, she onstage in minor roles, and it was from these experiences that the young composer had his first exposure to the art form. Recognizing his precocious talent, his parents arranged for piano lessons and instruction in basic composition. He entered the music academy in Bologna at the tender age of 14 and, once on his own, was writing short, one-act operatic farces for the Teatro San Moisé in Venice by the time he was eighteen. His first great success was La pietra del paragone which was given at La Scala in Milan in 1812. It was hailed by the author Stendhal as a work of comic genius. What distinguishes Rossini during this period is the seeming comfort he had with both comic and serious opera and the success bestowed upon him by his public in both genres. Between 1812 and 1816 he wrote the comedies Il Signor Bruschino, L’italiana in Algeri, Il turco in Italia and Barber. During the same period he produced an equal number of serious operas: Tancredi, Elisabetta, Aureliano in Palmira and Otello.
On December 26, 1815, Rossini was presented with a contract to produce a comic opera for the carnival season of the Teatro di Torre Argentina in Rome, just a few months later. Although it seems a short time to produce an opera from our standpoint, it was the custom in Italy for theatres to commission composers for upcoming seasons, even if they were only a few months away. But this contract was quite unique: signed at the end of December, the finished score was expected by the middle of January, with a full production of the opera to follow in February. That means that Rossini had little over a month to choose a libretto, write the score, orchestrate it and produce the recitatives. Even by early 19th century standards, this was an unusually rapid pace for production of an opera.
It was Cesare Sterbini, the librettist of Rossini’s most recent opera Torvaldo e Dorliska (1815), who suggested that he look at a libretto prepared for the composer Paisiello based on Beaumarchais’ Barber of Seville. Since it already existed and was a well-known entity, it would not take Rossini and Sterbini long to fashion it into a useable piece. After gaining the elder Paisiello’s permission to embark upon the same material that he had so successfully navigated before, Rossini and Sterbini set to work. The librettist produced the drama in twelve days and it’s been deduced from various contemporary sources that Rossini could not have written Barber in more than 19 or 20 days at most. This is incredibly fast work, particularly when you consider that Il barbiere di Siviglia is arguably the greatest opera buffa ever written. Rossini did, however, steal passages and motives from his own earlier works in order to hasten the process, but only a tune here, a melody there, and the complete reworking of earlier material in order to make it work in a new context. As was the custom at the time, the composer directed all of the staging rehearsals, coached all of the singers as well as the chorus and agreed to be present at the keyboard to conduct the first three performances (again, this was the custom in Italian opera houses at the time for new works). The first performance was on February 20, 1816 and despite Paisiello’s agreement that the young composer could write his own version of Barber, the older composer’s claque (a group of paid supporters) was in attendance, ready to pounce on the first sign of weakness.
Their first opportunity came with the entrance of the young Rossini into the pit before the performance of the overture. He had chosen to wear a foppish, Spanish style coat with large gold buttons, something the audience found amusingly pretentious, and so the catcalls and the laughter began. Then Manuel Garcia, the great tenor who was the first Count Almaviva, decided to accompany himself on the guitar in the serenade that opens his scene. While tuning the guitar onstage, a string broke, bringing more hissing and laughter. When Figaro bounded onstage a few minutes later, carrying yet another guitar, the audience’s reaction got worse. The singer portraying Basilio tripped over some badly placed scenery on his entrance and sang his entire aria with a handkerchief placed in front of his bloodied nose. Finally, a stray cat wandered onto the set in the finale of Act I, provoking Almaviva, Figaro, Rosina and Bartolo to chase it all over the stage. The poor creature finally took refuge under Rosina’s skirts, to the great amusement of the crowd.
During this entire fiasco, Rossini calmly led the orchestra and cast in their performance, rendered his bow after the final cadence, and went home. The next evening he feigned illness and stayed in bed, hoping to avoid the theatre at all costs. But the second performance must have gone much better; late that night he was awakened from a deep sleep by shouts of ‘bravo, bravissimo Figaro’ from the street in front of his apartment. The audience had come to shower praise on him for what he called “an unprecedented success”. From that performance on, The Barber of Seville was assured its place in opera history.