100 Great Operas and Their Stories: Act-By-Act Synopses (8 page)

But just before Bacchus utters his final words of love, from within the cave, Zerbinetta appears for a brief moment and reminds us that when a new man—or god—comes along, ladies are likely to find him pretty wonderful.

THE BARBER OF SEVILLE

(Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Opera in two acts by Gioacchino Antonio Rossini
with libretto in Italian by Cesare Sterbini,
based on the comedy of the same name by
Pierre Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais

Time: 17th century

Place: Seville

First performance at Rome, February 20, 1816

    
The Barber of Seville
was not the original title of this opera, though it was of the Beaumarchais play on which it is based. It was
Almaviva, ossia l’inutile precauzione (Almaviva, or the Futile Precaution)
. The reason Rossini took the futile precaution of retitling the work was that a
Barber of Seville
set to music by Giovanni Paisiello had been popular on the operatic stage for more than thirty years, and Rossini did not wish to offend the respected and irascible composer of over a hundred operas, who was then seventy-five years old.

Despite the precaution, Paisiello’s followers (some say inspired by the old man) set up such a din of shouting and catcalls at the premiere of Rossini’s work that it was a bad failure. Rossini, who had conducted, slunk out of the theater;
but when his leading lady later called to console him, she reported that he was imperturbably asleep in bed.

The second and subsequent performances that week went better; but the initial failure made for a slow start for the long and wide popularity of this work. As for Paisiello, he died three and a half months later and never knew that Rossini’s work would completely overshadow his own. As a matter of fact, when Paisiello’s work is occasionally put on today by some opera workshop, one is struck by the many outward similarities; yet the vigor, the vitality, the musical humor that have made the younger man’s work survive many thousands of performances are found in much smaller quantities in the Paisiello score. Rossini’s won not only the love of millions but the genuine respect and affection of such utterly differently oriented composers as Beethoven, Wagner, and Brahms.

OVERTURE

The overture that we always hear nowadays was not the original overture to the opera, which consisted of a mélange of popular Spanish tunes. That one, somehow or other, managed to get lost soon after the first performance. Rossini, a notably lazy fellow, thereupon dug up an old overture from his trunk, one that he had composed seven years earlier for a forgotten tidbit named
L’Equivoco stravagante
. It had also been useful when he ran short of overtures for two other operas,
Aureliano in Palmira
and
Elizabeth, Queen of England
. And though its gay, tripping tunes would scarcely seem to serve well for a tragedy about the Queen of England, it serves so well for
The Barber of Seville
that certain musical commentators have imagined they saw in it musical portraits of Rosina, Figaro, and Lord knows what else.

ACT I

Scene 1
On a street in Seville a hired band of musicians gathers to accompany young Count Almaviva as he serenades his lovely Sevillian inamorata, Rosina. It’s a very pretty, florid
serenade the Count delivers
(Ecco ridente)
. No use, though; the music fails to summon Rosina, who is closely watched by her old guardian Dr. Bartolo. The musicians are dismissed with considerable trouble by the Count and his servant, Fiorello, and presently a jolly baritone is heard tra-la-la-ing offstage. It is Figaro, the barber, sounding off in praise of himself and telling us how indispensable he is to everyone in town. This self-endorsement is, of course, the delightful
Largo al factotum
. It quickly turns out that Figaro has known the Count a long time. (There aren’t many people around town he does
not
know.) The Count—with the aid of a bit of ready cash—enlists Figaro in his purpose to marry Rosina, and they begin to make plans. But they are interrupted by Dr. Bartolo, who leaves his house muttering that he plans to marry Rosina himself that very day.

Now the two conspirators have to act quickly. With Bartolo gone from the house, Almaviva tries another serenade, and this time he identifies himself as Lindoro. Also this time he gets a response. Rosina begins to answer favorably from the balcony, when she is forcibly drawn back by someone inside. The quick brain of Figaro at once hatches a plot. Almaviva shall disguise himself as a drunken soldier and gain entrance into the house by saying that the army has billeted him there. The idea appeals to the Count, and the scene ends with a jolly duet as the lover expresses his delight over the prospects of success while the barber expresses
his
delight over the prospect of getting paid.

Scene 2
Things happen pretty fast and furiously in the second scene, which takes place in Dr. Bartolo’s house. Perhaps the best way to keep them in mind is to make special note of the big arias and concerted numbers. First, then, there is the famous coloratura aria
Una voce poco fa
. In it Rosina first admits her love for the unknown serenader Lindoro, then vows to marry him despite her guardian, and goes on to tell what a fine, docile wife she could make until thwarted. Under such circumstances she can be as devilish as any other shrew. (Usually, in modern performances, this role is sung by a coloratura soprano. That, however, is not the way Rossini wrote
it. He intended it for a coloratura mezzo-soprano, a rather rare phenomenon in the twentieth century.) After her aria she has a cordial little talk with Figaro, the barber, and a less cordial one with Dr. Bartolo.

The next big aria is known as
La calunnia
—in praise of calumny or vicious gossip. Don Basilio, a music master, reports to his old friend Dr. Bartolo that Count Almaviva has arrived in town, and that he is Rosina’s mysterious lover. How is he to be discredited? Why, says Basilio, by calumny. And that is the occasion for the aria, in which evil whispers are graphically described as developing into a veritable storm of disapprobation. Following this comes a long and rather coy dialogue between Figaro and Rosina in which the barber tells the girl that a poor young man named Lindoro is in love with her and she had better write him a note. Rosina, as a matter of fact, has already written the note, and she gives it to the barber to be delivered. There is then another dialogue—a short one—in which Rosina tries to mislead her old guardian with a half a dozen lies, all of which he sees through.

Roused to fury by these attacks on his dignity, Dr. Bartolo has the third big aria of this scene (A
un dottor della mia sorte)
. A professional man of his standing, he says, can’t be treated like that—and he orders Rosina locked up in her chamber.

Soon after this enters Count Almaviva according to plan-that is, disguised as a drunken soldier who claims to be billeted in the doctor’s house. None of the doctor’s protests can help him: the apparently drunken soldier disregards his evidence of exemption, threatens him with his sword, shouts and curses—but also manages,
sub rosa
, to let Rosina know he is Lindoro. Everything develops into a terrific uproar as, one by one, the servant Berta, the barber Figaro, and the music master Basilio join in. Finally the police break up the row. The Count is about to be arrested, when he privately shows the police officer his true rank, and the act ends with a brilliant nine-part chorus in which everyone agrees that the whole situation is quite insane.

ACT II

With the beginning of the second act confusion is even worse confounded. Count Almaviva comes to Bartolo’s house in a new disguise—the black cloak and shovel hat of the seventeenth-century professor. He says he is substituting for Don Basilio, who is sick, and he insists on giving Rosina a music lesson. During that lesson (in most modern opera houses) the leading soprano usually interpolates anything from “Home Sweet Home” to the most elaborate coloratura aria. But for the original score Rossini provided a song called
L’Inutile precauzione
—“The Vain Precaution”—which was the original subtitle to the opera. Dr. Bartolo doesn’t like this “modern music,” as he calls it, and obliges in his turn with a silly, old-fashioned ditty.

A moment later Figaro enters and
insists
on shaving the doctor; and while the old fellow is handicapped with a face full of lather, arrangements are made by the lovers for an elopement that evening. But things are just a little too clear to satisfy the authors of this opera, and so Don Basilio enters. He is, of course, not sick at all; but in a very amusing quintet everyone persuades him that he has scarlet fever, and he is packed off to bed. All these unusual developments have aroused Dr. Bartolo’s suspicions, and at the end of another amusing concerted number, he shoos everyone out. Then, by way of contrast, there is a cute little song for Berta, the maid, who remarks on the idiocy of every old fool’s wanting to get married.

At this point, the orchestra paints a vivid storm to indicate what the weather is outside and also to suggest the passage of some time. (The music for this was borrowed by Rossini from his own opera
La pietra del paragone.)
Now—enter the Count and Figaro in cloaks, ready for the elopement. First, however, they must persuade Rosina that their intentions are honorable, for until this point she does not know that her Lindoro and the Count Almaviva are one and the same. They are soon ready, and are singing the elopement trio
(Zitti, zitti)
when they find the ladder gone! It turns out later that Dr. Bartolo
had taken it away as he went off to arrange his own marriage to Rosina.

And so, when Basilio and a notary arrive—sent by Bartolo—the Count bribes these newcomers to officiate at
his
wedding to Rosina. The hasty ceremony is scarcely over when Bartolo returns with police officers. Everything is now explained, and the doctor is even partially reconciled to his defeat when the Count assures him he may keep Rosina’s dowry for himself. The comedy thus ends—as it should—with general rejoicing.

And if you want to find out what happened subsequently to these characters, turn to the account of Mozart’s
The Marriage of Figaro
, which is based on Beaumarchais’s sequel to his
Barber of Seville
.

THE BARTERED BRIDE

(Prodaná Nevešta—Die verkaufte Braut)

Opera in three acts by Bedřich Smetana with
libretto in Czech by Karel Sabina

Time: 19th century

Place: a small Bohemian village

First performance at Prague, May 30, 1866

    It was after Austria’s defeat at the hands of Italy that the Czechs, around 1860, began to cultivate their own arts in a deliberate encouragement of nationalism. Franz Josef’s government became less restrictive; national theaters started to be built; and native art music was needed (the Czechs always having had a fine native folk music). Smetana and, later, Dvořák were the most prominent serious composers developed under this nationalistic movement, and some of their orchestral music, at any rate, quickly was adopted by the whole Western world. But the only nineteenth-century Czech opera that has entered the repertoire of European and American
opera houses is
The Bartered Bride
, and this was not originally written as an opera but as an operetta. It had two acts, twenty musical numbers, and spoken dialogue. The requirements of foreign opera houses soon caused Smetana to make his score more ambitious. Three years after the premiere, for performance at the Opéra Comique of Paris, Smetana added an aria for the leading soprano as well as some dances, including the now famous
Polka
and
Furiant;
and the following year, for performance at St. Petersburg, the opera was divided into three acts and the spoken dialogue turned into recitative. It is in the final version that it is almost always played nowadays.