The Metropolitan Opera’s 2024–25 Live in HD season comes to a close with MET Opera Live: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, Rossini’s effervescent comedy. 

Rossini’s perfectly honed treasure survived a famously disastrous opening night (caused by factions and local politics more than any reaction to the work itself) to become what may be the world’s most popular comic opera.

MET Opera Live: Il Barbiere di Siviglia will keep its buoyant good humor and elegant melodies. These have delighted the diverse tastes of every generation for two centuries.

Several of the opera’s most recognizable tunes have entered the world’s musical unconscious, most notably the introductory patter song of the swaggering Figaro, the titular barber of Seville.

Russian mezzo-soprano Aigul Akhmetshina headlines a winning ensemble as the feisty heroine, Rosina, alongside American tenor Jack Swanson, in his Met debut, as her secret beloved, Count Almaviva.

Moldovan baritone Andrey Zhilikhovsky stars as Figaro, the ingenious barber of Seville, with Hungarian bass-baritone Peter Kálmán as Dr. Bartolo and Russian bass Alexander Vinogradov as Don Basilio rounding out the principal cast.

Giacomo Sagripanti conducts Bartlett Sher’s madcap production.