In the days before Verdi's domination of Italian music, when an opera buffa meant two tunes, a plank and an ensemble, Rossini composed The Barber of Seville. Yet despite critics who have scraped fy-fying fingers, directors who have indicated with expressive gestures the works of later composers, great coloraturas continue to elect this work. Last week, Galli-Curci, famed prima donna, made in it her first appearance of the season at the Metropolitan Opera House, Manhattan. Sweetly she rendered the falling cadenzas, the elegant trills, the brave bravuras. A great house, which came to praise, noticed that her lower register had improved,...
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