A Book of Operas | Page 5

He began to
set the pegs in the face of the waiting public. A string broke, and a new
one was drawn up amid the titters of the spectators. The song did not
please the auditors, who mocked at the singer by humming Spanish
fiorituri after him. Boisterous laughter broke out when Figaro came on
the stage also with a guitar, and "Largo al factotum" was lost in the din.
Another howl of delighted derision went up when Rosina's voice was
heard singing within: "Segui o caro, deh segui così" ("Continue, my
dear, continue thus"). The audience continued "thus." The
representative of Rosina was popular, but the fact that she was first
heard in a trifling phrase instead of an aria caused disappointment. The
duet, between Almaviva and Figaro, was sung amid hisses, shrieks, and
shouts. The cavatina "Una voce poco fà" got a triple round of applause,
however, and Rossini, interpreting the fact as a compliment to the
personality of the singer rather than to the music, after bowing to the
public, exclaimed: "Oh natura!" "Thank her," retorted Giorgi-Righetti;
"but for her you would not have had occasion to rise from your choir."
The turmoil began again with the next duet, and the finale was mere
dumb show. When the curtain fell, Rossini faced the mob, shrugged his
shoulders, and clapped his hands to show his contempt. Only the
musicians and singers heard the second act, the din being incessant
from beginning to end. Rossini remained imperturbable, and when

Giorgi-Rhigetti, Garcia, and Zamboni hastened to his lodgings to offer
their condolences as soon as they could don street attire, they found
him asleep. The next day he wrote the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo"
to take the place of Garcia's unlucky Spanish song, borrowing the air
from his own "Aureliano," composed two years before, into which it
had been incorporated from "Ciro," a still earlier work. When night
came, he feigned illness so as to escape the task of conducting. By that
time his enemies had worn themselves out. The music was heard amid
loud plaudits, and in a week the opera had scored a tremendous
success.
And now for the dramatic and musical contents of "Il Barbiere." At the
very outset Rossini opens the door for us to take a glimpse at the
changes in musical manner which were wrought by time. He had
faulted Paisiello's opera because in parts it had become antiquated, for
which reason he had had new situations introduced to meet the
"modern theatrical taste"; but he lived fifty years after "Il Barbiere" had
conquered the world, and never took the trouble to write an overture for
it, the one originally composed for the opera having been lost soon
after the first production. The overture which leads us into the opera
nowadays is all very well in its way and a striking example of how a
piece of music may benefit from fortuitous circumstances. Persons with
fantastic imaginations have rhapsodized on its appositeness, and
professed to hear in it the whispered plottings of the lovers and the
merry raillery of Rosina, contrasted with the futile ragings of her grouty
guardian; but when Rossini composed this piece of music, its mission
was to introduce an adventure of the Emperor Aurelian in Palmyra in
the third century of the Christian era. Having served that purpose, it
became the prelude to another opera which dealt with Queen Elizabeth
of England, a monarch who reigned some twelve hundred years after
Aurelian. Again, before the melody now known as that of Almaviva's
cavatina (which supplanted Garcia's unlucky Spanish song) had burst
into the efflorescence which now distinguishes it, it came as a chorus
from the mouths of Cyrus and his Persians in ancient Babylon. Truly,
the verities of time and place sat lightly on the Italian opera composers
of a hundred years ago. But the serenade which follows the rising of the
curtain preserves a custom more general at the time of Beaumarchais

than now, though it is not yet obsolete. Dr. Bartolo, who is guardian of
the fascinating Rosina, is in love with her, or at least wishes for reasons
not entirely dissociated from her money bags to make her his wife, and
therefore keeps her most of the time behind bolts and bars. The Count
Almaviva, however, has seen her on a visit from his estates to Seville,
becomes enamoured of her, and she has felt her heart warmed toward
him, though she is ignorant of his rank and knows him only under the
name of Lindoro. Hoping that it may bring him an opportunity for a
glance, mayhap a word with his inamorata, Amaviva follows the advice
given by Sir Proteus to Thurio in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"; he
visits his lady's chamber window, not at night,