The Barber of Seville

About the opera

• Run time: 3hrs 15min, 1 intermission
• Sung in: Italian
• Subtitles: English, Italian and other languages
• Opera house: Vienna State Opera

Despite a famously disastrous 1816 premiere, Rossini’s madcap comedy has become a favorite of audiences everywhere. Filled with instantly recognizable arias and ample opportunities for vocal virtuosity and hilarious hijinks, The Barbier always proves a delightful treat. This season at the Vienna State Opera Kate Lindsey stars as the feisty Rosina, alongside Davide Luciano as Figaro, the swaggering barber of Seville and Lawrence Brownlee as Count Almaviva. Marco Filippo Romano and Peter Kellner round out the cast as Dr. Bartolo and Don Basilio. Gianluca Capuano conducts.

Ticket information

• Select a date an book
• E-Ticket (Print@home)

Vienna State Opera

Address:

Opernring 2, 1010 Vienna, Google Maps

How to get there:

Subway: U1, U2, U4 to Karlsplatz
Trams: 1, 2, D, 62, 71 to Opernring
After the performance taxis will drive up to the main entrance

Creators

Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) was the most significant opera composer of his time. Astonishingly prolific, he composed more than 30 works over the course of just two decades, before retiring from opera composition by the age of 37. At the age of 18 he had his first opera buffa, La Cambiale di matrimonio, performed in Venice. By the age of 20, three of his operas had already been staged, and a year later this number would rise to ten. The premiere of Tancredi in 1813 made him the undisputed master of the Italian opera scene for many years. The works followed one another at a frenetic pace: The Barber of Seville and Otello in 1816, La Cenerentola and Armide in 1817, La Donna del lago in 1819, Maometto II in 1821, Semiramis in 1823...His last opera, Guillaume Tell, premiered at the Paris Opera in 1829, was a triumph.

Italian poet and librettist Cesare Sterbini (1784-1831) adapted the comedy Le Barbier de Séville by Pierre Beaumarchais (1732 –1799), one of the great self-made men of 18th-century Europe. Trained as a watchmaker, he rose through the ranks of French nobility to become a successful inventor, businessman, publisher and diplomat. Today Beaumarchais is best known, however, for his semi-autobiographical Figaro plays.