Chenqi

Barber of Seville

Count Almaviva	the young count who persue Rosina’s love
Bartolo	Rosina’s doctor and guardian, also want to marry Rosina
Rosina	The girl the young count and Bartolo both love
Figaro	The barber who helped count to marry Rosina

Recently, my school orchestra has been doing an interesting piece. The piece is the overture for the opera, Barber of Seville. It is also called The Futile Precaution. The composer is Rossini. Barber of Seville is an opera which is written based on French comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais. The story describes a young Count Almaviva, named Lindoro, who pursues a girl called Rosina with a barber, Figaro’s help. Lindoro hopes that Rosina loves him not because of his money. Bartolo who is Rosina’s doctor, as well as a guardian wants to marry her, so he prevents Rosina from meeting people. Figaro, the barber of Bartolo, who is previously servant of Lindoro, gets paid for helping Lindoro. Finally Lindoro successfully gets married with Rossina.

Gioachino Antonio Rossini

Rossini was born in Pesaro, in 1792 in a musical family. He composed 39 operas, as well as religious music. In his late years, he had depressive disorder. His second wife accompanied him until he died in Paris. His funeral was worthy and big.

Some famous piece:

The Thieving Magpie, Cinderella, William Tell, etc.

The most famous version- Gioachino Antonio Rossini

The first version is written by a highly respected Italian composer, Giovanni Paisello, of the Classical period. When Rossini was asked to compose a new one, he asked for Paisello’s permission in order to show respect of the 1^st original piece. Rossini used only 13 days to complete his piece. At the beginning, especially the first performance, audiences made noises to disturb the show because people think that was extremely disrespect Paisello, who has a high reputation among audiences that he composed a new version. After a week, this situation finally begin to improve. As time went on, the Rossini version becomes the most famous piece in operas and orchestra concerts. And it is the peak of western comic opera history. Although those two pieces all defined as Classical period music. Because Rossini is a romantic period composer, I believe that his version contains more Romantic elements such as emotion and unpredictability. For example, you can clearly hear difference between forte and piano notes (strong and weak). Comparing to most Classical music, which is more rational, due to the environment people persue at the time and also the instruments people used. These two pieces are in different styles somehow.