Director’s Notes
Revisiting The Barber of Seville is like spending time with an old friend. In my 20s, I worked on many Rossini operas and spent several summers as an assistant director at the famous Rossini Festival in his birthplace, Pesaro, Italy. Pesaro is a seaside town on the Adriatic, the un-chic side of Italy. There is a tiny theater, as well as a few alternate venues. Back then, the noted Rossini scholar, Philip Gossett, was editing and reissuing Rossini’s scores. I came to learn all his obscure works by spending hours in the Foundation library pouring over these manuscripts. As an assistant director, my job was to work alongside the directors. It was a memorable time, with many fine Italian and American singers performing.
In short order, I was fortunate to be offered one of my very first solo directing jobs, doing my own new production of — coincidentally — The Barber of Seville, in, of all places, Reykjavík, for the Icelandic National Opera. And the opera was to be sung in Icelandic! But at that point, I didn’t care; it was my own new production. Since then, I have gone on to direct Barber in several different productions, and it is an opera that I am always happy to return to.
This production will be taking you back to a world inspired by the 18th-century Italian dramatist, Carlo Goldoni, with Venetian-style paintings and a commedia dell’arte aspect. I was inspired by the simple and direct world of these archetypal characters along with the genius of the delicious Beaumarchais play that inspired the opera. His writing and Rossini’s music make for a situational comedy with a revolutionary underpinning.
– Stage Director Francesca Zambello
A Revolutionary Playwright
Watchmaker, harp teacher, playwright, spy – Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais was something of a general factotum himself. Today operagoers know him as the man who gave us Figaro (and friends) in a trilogy of plays. Le Barbier de Séville (The Barber of Seville), the first, is a light-hearted comedy in which two young people, inspired by love, conspire against those who would prevent them from being together. In the second, La Folle Journée, ou Le Mariage de Figaro (The Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro), the high-spirited conspirators of Barber have lost their common cause – and are in danger of losing their youthful affection and regard for one another. The second play in Beaumarchais’ “Figaro Trilogy” has more of a political edge, which is even more pronounced in the work that follows: L’Autre Tartuffe, ou La Mère Coupable (The Other Tartuffe, or The Guilty Mother).
1732
Pierre-Augustin Caron is born in Paris.
1751
The first volumes of the Encyclopédie, edited by Denis Diderot, are produced in France; its stated aim is to “change the way people think.”
1753
Caron invents a new escapement for watches; the following year he is commissioned by Louis XV to create a watch mounted on a ring for Madame de Pompadour.
1756
Mozart is born.
1757
Caron takes the name Beaumarchais from property belonging to his wife.
1759
Beaumarchais becomes music teacher to the daughters of Louis XV.
Voltaire writes Candide.
1761
Beaumarchais buys a royal title.
1762
Gluck’s Orfeo ed Euridice, the first of his “reform” operas, premieres in Vienna; the Paris premiere will follow twelve years later.
1767
Beaumarchais’ first dramatic play, Eugénie, premieres at the Comédie Francaise.
1773
American colonists destroy a shipment of tea from the British East India Company in the Boston Harbor.
1774
Beaumarchais works as a secret agent in London.
1775
The Barber of Seville premieres as a five-act play and is not well received; the four-act version that follows is a success.
The American War of Independence begins.
1776
Beaumarchais is entrusted by the government to send aid to the American rebels against the English.
Volume I of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire is published.
1778
Voltaire dies.
1779
Beaumarchais purchases rights to publish the complete works of Voltaire, putting out 70 volumes between 1783-1790.
1782
Paisiello and Petrosello’s opera based on The Barber of Seville premieres in St. Petersburg.
1784
The first performance of The Marriage of Figaro (play) is given at the Comedie Francaise; with the proceeds, Beaumarchais creates an institution for poor nursing mothers.
1786
Mozart and Da Ponte produce an opera based on The Marriage of Figaro.
1787
Beaumarchais and Salieri’s opera Tarare premieres in Paris.
1789
In Paris, revolutionaries storm the Bastille.
1791
Mozart dies.
1792
A Mother’s Guilt premieres at the Théâtre du Marais; the titles “Count” and “Countess” are suppressed for the Almavivas.
Beaumarchais is entrusted with the purchase and transfer of 60,000 muskets stored in Holland, but arms suppliers have him arrested and imprisoned. Once he is freed, he flees to London, where he is jailed for debt.
Rossini is born.
1793
Louis XVI is executed and the Reign of Terror begins.
1799
Beaumarchais dies and is buried in the garden of his home.
1816
Rossini’s Almaviva premieres; later that year, after Paisiello dies, it is retitled The Barber of Seville.
1822
The remains of Beaumarchais are transferred to Père Lachaise cemetery.
“To appear always deeply concerned for the good of the State, yet to be concerned with nothing but self-interest; to assemble and say nothing; to pretend vast secrecy where there is nothing to conceal; to shut yourself up in your quarters, and mend your pen or pick your teeth while your servants inform the waiting crowd you are too busy to be approached – this, with the art of intercepting letters and excusing the poverty of means by the importance of the ends – this is the whole mystery of politics, or I am an idiot.” – Beaumarchais