“Figaro! Figaro! Figaro! Feeee-ga-ro!”

The name of Rossini’s eponymous barber of Seville is familiar to lots of people who don’t know or care about opera, and “Largo al factotum” — Figaro’s rollicking entrance aria — is one of the world’s best-known opera extracts. This virtuoso baritone solo entered pop culture via Disney cartoons, television commercials and the Robin Williams film “Mrs. Doubtfire.” Innumerable household pets bear the loquacious hero’s name. Figure skater Javier Fernandez won the world championship skating to the “Largo” last year.

Pittsburgh Opera will revive Rossini’s perennial favorite, “The Barber of Seville,” opening at the Benedum Center Saturday, with Jonathan Beyer, an alumnus of the company’s resident artist program, in the title role. Mr. Beyer, 34, says he only learned “Largo al factotum” when he was being considered for the role of Figaro in Boston.

“I had always avoided the aria,” he explains, “because it was such a monumental piece, and I was afraid to tackle it because everyone knows it and has expectations about it.”

The singer landed the role in Boston, which led to further productions in Italy, France and back home in Virginia, St. Louis and Philadelphia. Mr. Beyer describes the aria as “full of easy-going charm,” adding, “it’s a very demanding entrance aria. It takes a great deal of work to make such a difficult piece read as effortless and carefree.”

Figaro’s opening line translates literally as “make room for the city’s jack-of-all-trades.” In past centuries, barbers routinely performed surgery, dentistry and bathing, in addition to cutting hair and shaving beards. Figaro’s talents also include helping the Count Almaviva marry his chosen Rosina, by outwitting the girl’s elderly guardian, Dr. Bartolo, who wants to marry her for her dowry.

“The Barber of Seville” was originally a play by French revolutionary writer Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais, first performed in Paris in 1775. Figaro quickly became a symbol of the clever common man, who is not only smarter than his aristocratic oppressors, but also morally superior. The miracle of “Largo al factotum” is the way Rossini immediately establishes Figaro’s cleverness, his cunning and his irresistible charm, in less than five minutes. In Beaumarchais’ play, Figaro had entered with a simple love song, with music by Antoine-Laurent Baudron.

The work was adapted into Italian, for an opera by Giovanni Paisiello, in 1782. Paisiello’s “Barber” was so popular that Rossini hesitated to use the original title when he set Beaumarchais’ play to music of his own 34 years later.

Beaumarchais wrote a sequel to his “Barber” called “The Marriage of Figaro,” which Mozart set to music as a follow-up to Paisiello’s opera in 1786. The play was considered so seditious; however, that librettist, Lorenzo Da Ponte, had to change a monologue in which Figaro rails against the nobility into a tirade against women — a more acceptable target in those days. In 1792, Beaumarchais completed his trilogy with “The Guilty Mother,” a cynical afterthought in which the characters have grown old, disillusioned and unhappy.

In actual performances, Rossini’s “Largo” has been subject to elaborate ornamentation and alterations over the years, a practice common in Rossini’s time. One of the most remarkable recorded examples is by baritone Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960), who not only went up to a repeated high A at one point, but also took the phrase down a two-octave scale to a low G and back up again. A spectacular modern version is by Sherrill Milnes, who takes the piece at breakneck speed, clings to his interpolated high notes, and goes to a head-voice (falsetto) high C on the last repeated call of “Figaro.” You can hear these performances on www.youtube.com.

Mr. Beyer feels that there has been a tradition of over-ornamenting the aria. “I think it paints the peacock,” he says, “when you do that. The piece is so entertaining that little extra is actually needed. I try to keep my ornaments to a minimum and let the piece speak for itself.”

Brian Vu, a Pittsburgh Opera resident artist who will be Figaro in a special performance for students, has won numerous auditions and competitions with “Largo.” Most recently, he was a grand finalist of this year’s Metropolitan Opera National Council Auditions.

Mr. Vu, 26, says, “Judges love this aria because it’s a technically demanding piece that is done so often, but hard to find a performance that is lovable and precise. I’d like to think I infuse my own performance with a bit of my Southern California charm.”

Mr. Beyer encapsulates the effect that “Largo” has on performers and public alike, saying, “I find the aria to be a giant wave, so I like to hop on and go for a ride.”

Robert Croan is a Post-Gazette senior editor. 

First Published: March 30, 2016, 6:00 p.m.