The Twelve Months

Opera in two acts (three scenes)

Performed in Italian with Russian subtitles

Libretto by Cesare Sterbini, based on Pierre Beaumarchais’s comedy The Barber of Seville, or The Futile Precaution.

Version by the Perm Opera and Ballet Theatre

The opera was written in 1816. This version was first performed in Perm in 2010. Running time: 2 hours 45 minutes including 1 interval

The story, borrowed from Beaumarchais, of Count Almaviva and the resourceful barber Figaro, who helps his master marry the lovely Rosina despite the machinations of her voluptuary guardian, formed the basis for one of Rossini’s most frequently performed operas. In director Valeria Borodina’s version, the plot of the opera is removed from the time it was written and transposed to the modern day. Using the classic ‘theatre within a theatre’ device, the director uses the conflicts of the eighteenth-century libretto to describe the theatre of our time.