The Dallas Opera / Umsagnir

When Gioachino Rossini’s Barber of Seville premiered in 1816, it was one of the most disastrous opening nights in operatic history. The 24-year-old upstart composer had set the same de Beaumarchais story as the revered Giovanni Paisiello in an established opera of the same name and Paisiello instigated his followers to hiss and boo throughout the premiere. The Rossini debut had other issues, including late singer substitutions, a Basilio who suffered a persistent nosebleed and an intruding feline that meandered onstage with incessant meowing. Yet it was Rossini’s Barber of Seville that would quickly win popularity and push Paisiello’s work into obscurity. Rossini’s Barber served as a pivotal moment in the evolution of opera buffa from hackneyed and predictable to something exciting and unexpected. The hilarity of librettist Cesar Strebini’s caricatured subjects and the vibrant musical language codified Rossini as the quintessential composer of Italian comic opera after the work’s second performance. His Barber lays claim to a slew of operatic favorites that continue to dominate the canon today.

On Friday night, at the Winspear Opera House, it performed the first of the four operas, Das Rheingold, in a brand new production impressive both vocally and orchestrally