Numbers in El barberillo de Lavapiés such as the song for Paloma "Como nací en la calle de la Paloma", Lamparilla's patter songs as well as the jota and seguidilla became familiar in Spanish musical culture.

[3] The work was particularly admired by Manuel de Falla, who described Pan y toros and El barberillo de Lavapiés as Barbieri's most outstanding theatrical works "which reflect the rhythmic-melodic character of Spanish song and dance at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth", and which "undoubtedly exerted an influence on Spanish composers, shaping certain unmistakable features we find in our music from about the middle of the last century until Albéniz and Granados".

[2] Outside Spain the work has been produced in Germany under the title Lamparilla, while in England it was broadcast in 1954 by the BBC in a version by Geoffrey Dunn, with amended instrumentation by Roberto Gerhard and a cast that included Maria Perilli and Bruce Boyce as Paloma and Lamparilla, Marjorie Westbury and Thomas Round as the Marquesita and Don Luis, with Ian Wallace as Don Juan,[5] conducted by Stanford Robinson, and issued on CDs in 2020.

[6] There have been several recordings, complete conducted by Ataúlfo Argenta (1955), Federico Moreno Torroba (1969) and Víctor Pablo Pérez (1994), and of excerpts.

Next the Marquesita enters incognito for a secret meeting with Don Juan de Peralta, a fellow conspirator in a plot of the Infanta to get rid of the unpopular prime minister Grimaldi and to replace him with Floridablanca.

When the police come to the inn, Lamparilla at first diverts attention, but when Luis tells Don Pedro, the guards' commander, of the conspiracy, a sedan chair is carried on to take the prisoners.

As the guards prepare to grab the plotters, Paloma warns La Marquesita who is just able to escape through adjoining shops with the co-conspirators.

However, Lamparilla has fled across the rooftops and he rushes back in to announce that Grimaldi has been removed and that Floridablanca now replaces him as prime minister.

As a nephew of Grimaldi, Don Luis is forced to go into exile but La Marquesita decides to join him, while Lamparilla and Paloma pledge their mutual love.