Festival Orchestra 2, The Barber of Seville

The Barber of Seville, or The Useless Precaution, is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. Musicologists believe that the music was composed in just under three weeks, although the famous overture was actually recycled from two earlier Rossini operas. Nonetheless, The Barber has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy in music, and has been described as the “opera buffa of all opere buffe.”