Giochino Rossini
sung in Italian with English supertitles
Based on the first of a three-part series of plays by Pierre Beaumarchais, the opera becomes a prequel to Mozart's Le Nozze di Figaro. Rossini transports us back to the beginnign of the great romance between Count Almaviva and Rosina. This time, Almaviva is a single young man of wealth, and laser focused on freeing his love from her cloistered existence under the roof of her guardian, Bartolo. Almaviva pretends to be a poor student, to be sure Rosina loves him, not his money. Rosina has money of her own, a prie Bartolo hopes to seize when his ward is old enough to marry...