Learn more about the Italian opera!

Each 2 hour session is centred around a different lyrical masterpiece. Our Italian teacher Anna will talk about the historical context, the author and the plot of the opera. Of course you’ll also listen to and study some of the most famous arias.
The course is in Italian! A B1 level (or higher) is required to follow this class.

29  June  – Il barbiere di Siviglia
‘Il barbiere di Siviglia’ (The Barber of Seville) is an opera buffa in two acts by Gioachino Rossini with an Italian libretto by Cesare Sterbini. The libretto was based on Pierre Beaumarchais’s French comedy Le Barbier de Séville (1775). The première of Rossini’s opera (under the title ‘Almaviva, o sia L’inutile precauzione’) took place on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome.

Rossini’s barber has proven to be one of the greatest masterpieces of comedy within music, and has been described as thé opera buffa of all ‘opere buffe’. After two hundred years it is still a popular work.