It was Manuel Garcia’s troupe that first performed “Il Barbiere di Siviglia” in New York, and four of the parts in the opera were played by members of his family.  Manuel, the father, was the Count, as he had been at the premieres in Rome, London, and Paris; Manuel, son, was the Figaro (he lived to read about eighty-one years of operatic enterprise in New York, and died at the age of 101 years in London in 1906); Signora Garcia, mere, was the Berta, and Rosina was sung and played by that “cunning pattern of excellent nature,” as a writer of the day called her, Signorina Garcia, afterward the famous Malibran.  The other performers at this representation of the Italian “Barber” were Signor Rosich (Dr. Bartolo), Signor Angrisani (Don Basilio), and Signor Crivelli, the younger (Fiorello).  The opera was given twenty-three times in a season of seventy-nine nights, and the receipts ranged from $1843 on the opening night and $1834 on the closing, down to $356 on the twenty-ninth night.

But neither Phillipps nor Garcia was the first to present an operatic version of Beaumarchais’s comedy to the American people.  French operas by Rousseau, Monsigny, Dalayrac, and Gretry, which may be said to have composed the staple of the opera-houses of Europe in the last decades of the eighteenth century, were known also in the contemporaneous theatres of Charleston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York.  In 1794 the last three of these cities enjoyed “an opera in 3 acts,” the text by Colman, entitled, “The Spanish Barber; or, The Futile Precaution.”  Nothing is said in the announcements of this opera touching the authorship of the music, but it seems to be an inevitable conclusion that it was Paisiello’s, composed for St. Petersburg about 1780.  There were German “Barbers” in existence at the time composed by Benda (Friedrich Ludwig), Elsperger, and Schulz, but they did not enjoy large popularity in their own country, and Isouard’s “Barbier” was not yet written.  Paisiello’s opera, on the contrary, was extremely popular, throughout Europe.  True, he called it “The Barber of Seville,” not “The Spanish Barber,” but Colman’s subtitle, “The Futile Precaution,” came from the original French title.  Rossini also adopted it and purposely avoided the chief title set by Beaumarchais and used by Paisiello; but he was not long permitted to have his way.  Thereby hangs a tale of the composition and first failure of his opera which I must now relate.

On December 26, 1815, the first day of the carnival season, Rossini produced his opera, “Torvaldo e Dorliska,” at the Teatro Argentina, in Rome, and at the same time signed a contract with Cesarini, the impresario of the theatre, to have the first act of a second opera ready on the twentieth day of the following January.  For this opera Rossini was to receive 400 Roman scudi (the equivalent of about $400) after the first three performances, which he was to conduct seated at the pianoforte in the orchestra,