A Close Shave with Rossini's The Barber of Seville Overture
The Best Moments

I begin The Barber of Seville Overture with a slow introduction in E major where a loud chord wakes up the audience, followed by the strings tiptoeing around like someone trying not to wake the neighbors. It sounds as if the musicians are still making up their minds about what to play, before a few big chords finally clear the room for the real fun to begin.

Once we reach the middle of the piece, I shift into a fast E minor section where the strings scamper along with a nervous, tiptoeing energy before a bright second tune steps out to charm the crowd. Instead of writing a long, complicated middle section to wrestle with those tunes the way serious composers usually do, I simply skip the homework and go straight back to repeating the best parts.

For the end of the overture, I bring out the trick that earned me the nickname Monsieur Crescendo in Paris: repeating a simple phrase over and over while adding flutes, oboes, horns, trumpets, and cymbals until the whole orchestra is roaring like a runaway carriage. Then I push the pace even faster for the final stretch in E major, bringing the curtain up with the bass drum and timpani pounding away so nobody in Rome could possibly sleep through the start of my comedy.