Il Barbiere di Siviglia (2 DVD) - Joyce DiDonato, Juan Diego Flórez
Composer: Gioachino Rossini
Release Date: April 20, 2010
Conductor: Antonio Pappano
Artists:
Joyce DiDonato
Juan Diego Flórez
Ferruccio Furlanetto
Alessandro Corbelli
Orchestra: Royal Opera House Covent Garden Orchestra
Label: Warner Classics
Language: Italian
Subtitles: English
 Region: All Regions
Run Time: 150 minutes

This production of Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia/Barber of Seville, featuring Joyce DiDonato and Juan Diego Flórez, dates from 2009 at London’s Royal Opera House. We see Joyce DiDonato overcoming the challenges of performing her role in a wheelchair, due to an injury in an earlier show. She was determined to continue performing, and this DVD includes an interview with DiDonato on her stage accident and subsequent wheelchair performances.
 

Its story of two young lovers, an elderly guardian who wants the girl for himself, and Figaro, the resourceful barber of the title make Gioachino Rossini’s Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) one of opera’s most beloved comedies. At the end of the first act, the leading characters, confused by what’s going on, sing about their feeling of hearing the sound of an anvil being hammered inside their heads—a turn of phrase taken literally in director Bartlett Sher’s hit Met production.