Expert: David Froom - 6/30/2004

Question
The introductory music of Rossini's Barber of Seville and the ballet La Fille Mal Guardee is identical, note for note.  I've never been able to get an explanation of how this happened.  Do you know?

Answer
Sounds like a trip to the library would be useful!  

I don't know the specifics, but I can tell you generally that:

1)  Operas in Rossini's time were written for the present, not posterity.
2)  Rossini was known to be a lazy man.
3)  Reusing things was not completely unheard of.  There are two Mozart piano sonata, for example, that have identical last movements (though the music is in different keys).

Someone must have written about this.  A library with a good music collection and a research librarian willing to send you in a good direction should get you to a story about this, if there is one.

Sorry not to help more.

David Froom