THE BARBER OF SEVILLE

SYNOPSIS

Setting: Seville, Spain in the 1800s

Count Almaviva wants to marry the lovely Rosina, but her tyrannical guardian, Dr. Bartolo, who keeps her under lock and key, plans on marrying her himself. Almaviva enlists the aid of Figaro, Dr. Bartolo’s clever barber, who helps Almaviva steal into Bartolo’s house on several occasions, disguised first as a poor student, then as a solider, and later as a music teacher. Eventually, Bartolo catches on and launches a counter-plot of his own, aided by his only confidant, Don Basilio. In the end, love and youth triumph over age and tyranny.

 

Act I

The action begins outside the house of Dr. Bartolo in Seville. Accomapnied by his servant Fiorello and some hired musicians, Count Almaviva sings a serandade beneath the window of Rosina. Along comes Figaro, barber and self-styled factotum to all of Seville. Figaro informs the Count, for whom he used to work, that Rosina is the ward of the terrible Dr. Bartolo. When Rosina drops a letter form her window asking her mysterious serenader to identify himself, the Count asks Fiagro to help him win Rosina’s heand. Bartolo then leaves the house to arrange his own marriage to Rosina, and the COutn takes advantage of this opportunity to sing to Rosina again; he tells her his name is Lindoro. Figaro plans to smuggle the Count into Bartolo’s house disguised as a drunken solider.

 

Inside, Rosina asks Figaro, barber and doctor to the household, if he will deliver a letter for her. They are interrupted by Dr. Bartolo, who is furious with Figaro for having prescribed medications for his servants that reduced the one to non-stop sneezing and the other to continual yawning. Dr. Bartolo’s confidant, Don Basilio, currently employed as Rosina’s singing teacher, warns Dr. Bartolo that Count Almaviva, newly arrived in town, has designs on Rosina. Basilio suggests slander as the best way to get rid of Almaviva, and Bartolo insists they draw up his own marriage contract immediately. When they leave, Figaro tells Rosina her admirer is his cousin Lindoro, a poor student. Rosina gives him her letter to give to “Lindoro,” and he leaves. Dr. Bartolo deduces that Rosina has written a letter to someone and harasses her mercilessly. They are interrupted when the Coutn bursts into the house in his drunken solider disguise. He insists that he is to lodge her, despite Bartolo’s strenuous objections, and their quarrel turns into an enormous row involving the whole neighborhood.

 

 

Act II

Having gotten rid of the drunken soldier, Dr. Bartolo once again confronts the count—disguised this time as Don Alonso, substitute music teacher, who tells him that Don Basilio is ill and unable to teach Rosina’s lesson today. Bartolo is suspicious, but “Don Alonso” allays his fears when he gives him the letter Rosina wrote her “Lindoro.” During the singing lesson, Rosina sings an aria from the opera “The Useless Precaution,” and Figaro, who is giving Bartolo a shave, manages to steal the key to Rosina’s bedroom window. Don Basilio turns up, but is quickly booted out the door by the others. When Bartolo discovers the lovers plotting their elopement, he kicks the Count and Figaro out of the house and sends Basilio off to fetch the notary. He shows Rosina her letter and tells her that her “Lindoro” is really wooing her on behalf of another man. Shocked and unhappy, Rosina agrees to marry Bartolo.

 

Figaro and the Count prepare the elopement as a furious storm rages. When Rosina refuses to go with them, “Lindoro” reveals that he is the real Count Almaviva. Basilio is threatened and bribed into witnessing the marriage of Almavaiva and Rosina. Bartolo concedes defeat and blesses the lovers.

Synopsis courtesy of Seattle Opera