Le Barbier de Séville

Le Barbier de Séville , entitled II Barbiere de Siviglia in Italian and The Barber of Seville in English, was offered originally as a “melodramma buffo” in two acts with a score by Gioacchino Rossini and a libretto by Cesare Sterbini based upon the comedy by Pierre Beaumarchais (see eighteenth-century volume for Beaumarchais). It had its world premiere at the Teatro Argentina on 20 February 1816. It was billed at the Park Theatre in New York on 3 May 1819, and it was given initially in Paris in…