Giacchino Rossini
IL BARBIERE DI SIVIGLIA

...
When the old man arrives, he becames more and more suspicious. Someone knocks to door: it's the Count, disguised as a soldier and asking for a room. While Bartolo is protesting, the false soldier succeeds in speaking to Rosina, telling her to be Lindoro and giving her a note. But the note is seen by Bartolo, who orders to give him the paper. There is a moment of general confusion, and Rosina substitutes the love note with the laundry list. But in the meantime some guards enter the house, trying to arrest the drunk soldier. The Count shows a paper to the head of the guards, and he promptly stands to attention, while everyone looks astonished the scene.

In Bartolo's study room.
The old man is always more suspicious and afraid, when the Count arrives again at the door, pretending to be Don Alonzo, a music teacher sent by Don Basilio, who lies ill, to substitute him. Bartolo is diffident, so to be trusted the Count gives to Bartolo the note from Rosina, as if it were addressed to the Count of Almaviva, to be used as a calumny against the Count. Don Bartolo, happy, trusts him and calls Rosina for the music lesson.

While the two lovers are simulating a music lesson, Figaro arrives and starts shaving Bartolo. He succeeds in stealing the balcony key, needed by the lovers to flee away in the night. At once, Don Basilio arrives and is going to discover the truth: he is convinced to pretend being ill by a heavy money bag; but Don Bartolo finally understands all.

Don Bartolo asks Basilio to bring immediately a Notary. He shows to Rosina the note given him by Lindoro, and convinces her that Lindoro doesn't love her, as he is only a servant of the Count. She is convinced and accepts to marry Bartolo.

But Figaro and Lindoro thrive to enter the house, and they reveal to Rosina that Lindoro and the Count are the same person. While the two lovers try to escape the house, they discover that the stair prepared by Figaro to go down the balcony has been removed, and in the same moment Don Basilio comes with the Notary. Figaro tries the last chance, and introduces the two youngs as the betrothed. Don Basilio is convinced to stay silent by a gift and is kept quiet with a gun.

When Don Bartolo arrives with the guards, the two lovers are already married. The Count reveals his real identity, and to calm down the desperate old Bartolo he offers him Rosina's dowry. The opera ends in happiness and laughing.


Verdi's Figaro

ACT I.
A country estate outside Seville, late eighteenth century. While preparing for their wedding, the valet Figaro learns from the maid Susanna that their philandering employer, Count Almaviva, has designs on her. At this the servant vows to outwit his master. Before long the scheming Bartolo enters the servants' quarters with his housekeeper, Marcellina, who wants Figaro to marry her to cancel a debt he cannot pay. After Marcellina and Susanna trade insults, the amorous page Cherubino arrives, reveling in his infatuation with all women. He hides when the Count shows up, furious because he caught Cherubino flirting with Barbarina, the gardener's daughter. The Count pursues Susanna but conceals himself when the gossiping music master Don Basilio approaches. The Count steps forward, however, when Basilio suggests that Cherubino has a crush on the Countess. Almaviva is enraged further when he discovers Cherubino in the room. Figaro returns with fellow servants, who praise the Count's progressive reform in abolishing the droit du seigneur - the right of a noble to take a manservant's place on his wedding night. Almaviva assigns Cherubino to his regiment in Seville and leaves Figaro to cheer up the unhappy adolescent.

ACT II.
In her boudoir, the Countess laments her husband's waning love but plots to chasten him, encouraged by Figaro and Susanna. They will send Cherubino, disguised as Susanna, to a romantic assignation with the Count. Cherubino, smitten with the Countess, appears, and the two women begin to dress the page for his farcical rendezvous. While Susanna goes out to find a ribbon, the Count knocks at the door, furious to find it locked. Cherubino quickly hides in a closet, and the Countess admits her husband, who, when he hears a noise, is skeptical of her story that Susanna is inside the wardrobe. He takes his wife to fetch some tools with which to force the closet door. Meanwhile, Susanna, having observed everything from behind a screen, helps Cherubino out a window, then takes his place in the closet. Both Count and Countess are amazed to find her there. All seems well until the gardener, Antonio, storms in with crushed geraniums from a flower bed below the window. Figaro, who has run in to announce that the wedding is ready, pretends it was he who jumped from the window, faking a sprained ankle. Marcellina, Bartolo and Basilio burst into the room waving a court summons for Figaro, which delights the Count, as this gives him an excuse to delay the wedding.

ACT III.
In an audience room where the wedding is to take place, Susanna leads the Count on with promises of a rendezvous in the garden. The nobleman, however, grows doubtful when he spies her conspiring with Figaro; he vows revenge. Marcellina is astonished but thrilled to discover that Figaro is in fact her long-lost natural son by Bartolo. Mother and son embrace, provoking Susanna's anger until she too learns the truth. Finding a quiet moment, the Countess recalls her past happiness, then joins Susanna in composing a letter that invites the Count to the garden that night. Later, during the marriage ceremony of Figaro and Susanna, the bride manages to slip the note, sealed with a hatpin, to the Count, who pricks his finger, dropping the pin, which Figaro retrieves.

ACT IV.
In the moonlit garden, Barbarina, after unsuccessfully trying to find the lost hatpin, tells Figaro and Marcellina about the coming assignation between the Count and Susanna. Basilio counsels that it is wise to play the fool. Figaro inveighs against women and leaves, missing Susanna and the Countess, ready for their masquerade. Alone, Susanna rhapsodizes on her love for Figaro, but he, overhearing, thinks she means the Count. Susanna hides in time to see Cherubino woo the Countess - now disguised in Susanna's dress - until Almaviva chases him away and sends his wife, who he thinks is Susanna, to an arbor, to which he follows. By now Figaro understands the joke and, joining the fun, makes exaggerated love to Susanna in her Countess disguise. The Count returns, seeing, or so he thinks, Figaro with his wife. Outraged, he calls everyone to witness his judgment, but now the real Countess appears and reveals the ruse. Grasping the truth at last, the Count begs her pardon. All are reunited, and so ends this "mad day" at the court of the Almavivas.

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