This family introduced Italian opera to the United States during their 1825 tour in New York. For 10 points each:
[10h] Name this family whose patriarch Manuel originated Count Almaviva in Rossini’s The Barber of Seville. This family also includes Maria Malibran, Pauline Viardot, and the inventor of the laryngoscope, who taught Jenny Lind.
ANSWER: García [accept Manuel del Pópulo Vicente Rodríguez García, Manuel Patricio Rodríguez García, María Felicitas García Sitches (Malibran), or Michelle Ferdinande Pauline García (Viardot)]
[10m] This librettist produced the Garcías’ New York tour while he taught at Columbia. Naturally, the tour staged one of this librettist’s prior collaborations in a production that included Manuel Jr. as Leporello and Maria as Zerlina.
ANSWER: Lorenzo Da Ponte [or Emanuele Conegliano] (The opera is Don Giovanni, whose title character was played by Manuel Sr. in that production.)
[10e] The Garcías also introduced a Rossini opera with this name, in which they debuted Pauline as a character who plays the harp while singing “Assisa a’ piè d’un salice” (“ahs-SEE-zah ah pyeh doon sah-LEE-cheh”). A Verdi opera with this name introduces the title Moor in the aria “Esultate!”
ANSWER: Otello [reject “Othello”]
<Ivvone Zhou, Classical Music and Opera>