The Barber of Seville in concert in Seville! How meta! We’re not talking about Gioacchino Rossini’s razzle-dazzle version of 1816 (which believe it or not was not the last), but of the earlier hit by the gentler and more genial Giovanni Paisiello (which was not the first). Rossini’s opening night was famously sabotaged by Paisiello’s partisans, but their victory was of brief duration. The only snippet of Paisiello’s score living audiences might have encountered is the heart-melting cavatina by Count Almaviva, the dreamboat who courts the shut-in Rosina incognito—and that’s only if they’ve paid close attention to Stanley Kubrick’s slow but ravishing costume drama Barry Lyndon, adapted from William (Vanity Fair) Makepeace Thackeray’s little-remembered novel. Kubrick famously shot the film with three ultrafast, specially adapted Zeiss Planar 0.7/50mm. lenses (originally developed for NASA), which allowed him to capture action by candlelight. Nowhere was the effect more painterly than in the climactic gambling-room sequence, which finds the titular veteran and ne’er-do-well (Ryan O’Neill) losing his shirt and whatever else is left of the position and fortune for which he married his well-born wife (Marisa Berenson). It’s in the gambling house that you hear the Paisiello, delectably accompanied by bowed strings and mandolin. We can’t wait to hear the song in context. —Matthew Gurewitsch