- Opera seria in 2 acts
- Composer: Gioachino Rossini
- Libretto: Cesare della Valle, after his play Anna Erizo
- First performed: Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, 3rd December 1820
- Revised: Teatro La Fenice, Venice, 22nd December 1822
- Libretto: Cesare della Valle and Gaetano Rossi
Characters
| ANNA Erisso, daughter of Erisso | Soprano | Isabella Colbran |
| CALBO, Venetian noble | Contralto | Adelaide Comelli |
| Paolo ERISSO, Venetian governor of Negroponte | Tenor | Andrea Nozzari |
| CONDULMIERO, Venetian noble | Tenor | Giuseppe Ciccimarra |
| SELIMO, Muslim noble | Tenor | Gaetano Chizzola |
| MAOMETTO (Mehmed II) | Bass | Filippo Galli |
SETTING: Negroponte, in the Aegean Sea; 1470.
Mehmed II has gone down in history as a villain in the West, and a hero in the Muslim world. He it was who in 1453 captured Constantinople and destroyed the Byzantine Empire – or, as the Byzantines saw themselves, the Roman Empire. Oddly, Rossini’s opera does not concern this watershed in history, but takes place during the Ottoman-Venetian War (1463–79).
While the opera takes its name from “the Father of Conquest”, the work very much belongs to the prima donna soprano (Isabella Colbran, or Mrs. Rossini), who is on stage almost constantly. Like Tancredi (1813) or Bianca e Falliero (1819), it concerns a father/daughter relationship and the daughter’s affair with an outsider, in a Mediterranean city during war.
The opera takes place in 1470, in Negroponte, the Venetian colony on the Greek island of Euboea, under siege from the Ottoman Empire. Maometto, under the false name of “Uberto”, has seduced Anna, the daughter of Erisso, the governor of Negroponte. Distraught, she stabs herself to death on her mother’s tomb.
Maometto II was the last work Rossini composed for the Naples theatre of San Carlo, the scene of some of his most experimental opere serie. (Zelmira, premièred there in 1822, was written for Vienna.) It is considered to be one of Rossini’s most structurally ambitious operas: a three-hour, two-act work divided into only 11 numbers, including an enormous trio. But it was not a success in Naples (although not a failure, either).
Rossini revised Maometto for Venice two years later, with a happy ending (borrowing the rondo finale from La donna del lago). Later still, a French version, Le siège de Corinthe (1826), was Rossini’s first opera for Paris, and an enormous success, building on popular support for Greek independence from the Turks. Translated back into Italian as L’assedio di Corinto, it was a vehicle for 20th century soprani like Beverly Sills.
Later musicologists praised the original Naples version. Charles Osborne considered it “one of the most immediately attractive of Rossini’s serious operas, its orchestration rich and varied, its structure sound and imposing, and its dramatic impact striking”; Philip Gossett called it “one of the highest achievements of Rossini as a composer of serious opera”, notable for its “profound understanding of musical and dramatic structure”; and my pal Phil concurs.
Nevertheless, Maometto II leaves me rather cold. Despite several lively or attractive numbers, it is something of a bore. It is enormously long: there is not enough action or dramatic impetus to sustain a work of three hours, and the characters and situations are conventional and emotionally unengaging, serving only to generate highly ornamented, challenging vocal displays.
As Stendhal observed, each aria or duet in a Rossini opera is a brilliant morceau de concert that seeks to please, rather than express feeling; “lively, light, never boring, rarely sublime”, it appeals to the ears rather than to the soul. Rossini, as Wagner complained, sacrificed drama to “the naked, ear-delighting, absolute-melodic melody”.
But, as so often with Rossini, the music rarely aligns with what is happening onstage, or depicts the characters’ emotions. This is a sombre story about a city under siege, its sacking, the deaths of thousands, and which culminates in the suicide of the heroine – but Rossini’s music is too often jaunty and insouciant, and as prone to crescendi and chirpy little tunes as any of his comedies.
Listen to Erisso’s farewell to his daughter before his garrison prepares to fight to the death, or his presentation of the dagger with which to kill herself. It ends in one of Rossini’s patented crescendi, undoubtedly exciting, but the music would be as just as fitting for a comic opera. There’s no heart in it. Listen, too, to Erisso and Calbo’s defiance of the invading Maometto; or the finale where women urge Anna to flee for her life, or she will be tortured to death. One would never guess the situation from the music.
This discrepancy between the serious and tragic nature of the storyline and the lively, almost carefree character of the music is all too characteristic. Rossini’s failure to reflect the emotional and dramatic essence of his narratives infuriated the high-minded Berlioz, who damned “Rossini’s melodious cynicism, his contempt for the traditions of dramatic expression, his perpetual repetition of one kind of cadence, his eternal puerile crescendo, and his crashing big drum” as the antithesis of the sublime and true school of Gluck and Spontini (Mémoires).
The most celebrated number in the opera is the Terzettone (or “great big fat trio”) in Act I (No. 5), which runs for half an hour. The revelation that Anna’s “Uberto” is an impostor triggers a lovely trio of stupefaction, “Ohime! qual fulmine”. Through cannon shot and scene change, the terzettone continues, incorporating a chorus of praying women, a father / daughter duet (much too jolly), before the trio resumes, in the melting “Mira, signor, quel pianto”.
The rest of the score is uneven, ranging from the beautiful to the bland and even tawdry. Maometto’s two arias (No. 4 and No. 8) are both florid; that in Act I, “Sorgete, sorgete”, is preceded by a vigorous, almost Verdian, allegro vivace chorus of Muslim soldiers, but that in Act II, “All’invito guerra”, features a noisy chorus and the onstage banda – extremely vulgar. Anna’s entrance cavatina (No. 2), “Ah! che invan su questo ciglio”, is bland, and her Act II duet with Maometto (No. 7), “Anna, tu piangi?”, does not catch fire. The mezzo, Calbo, has a solo in Act II, “Non temer: d’un basso affetto” (No. 9), an ornate vocal showpiece.
Rossini was an accomplished craftsman of ensembles: the Act I finale (No. 5) contains a quintet and a typically effective but unremarkable stretta, hard to distinguish from the dozens he had already composed; and the Act II terzetto (No. 10), “In questi estremi istanti”, is attractive but oddly familiar (from Mosè’s prayer?). The chorus that opens Act II, “E follia sul fior degli anni” (No. 6), in which Turkish women try to comfort Anna, now a prisoner of the Ottomans, is lively and rather fun; Rossini’s cheerfulness is for once not out of place.
The Act II finale (No. 11) runs for half an hour, beginning with the inappropriately trivial women’s chorus. A more authentically tragic note is struck in Anna’s soliloquy, “Madre, a te che sull’Empiro”, and in the lamenting ensemble after Anna stabs herself.
The Venice version dismantles the terzettone, and substitutes new numbers for some of those in the Naples version. Much of the music, too, sounds like early Rossini – a throwback to Otello (1816) or even Sigismondo (1814).
Recordings
Listen to: June Anderson (Anna), Margarita Zimmermann (Calbo), Ernesto Palacio (Erisso), and Samuel Ramey (Maometto), with the Ambrosian Opera Chorus and Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Claudio Scimone, 1983. Philips.
Watch: Venice: Lorenzo Regazzo (Maometto), Carmen Giannattasio (Anna), Annarita Gemmabella (Calbo), and Maxim Mironov (Erisso), with the orchestra and chorus of the Teatro La Fenice, conducted by Claudio Scimone, Venice, 2005.
Works consulted
- Stendhal, Vie de Rossini, 1824
- Philip Gossett, “Maometto II: Soundness of Structure and Musical Splendour”, Philips recording, 1983.
- Charles Osborne, The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti and Bellini. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1994.
- Richard Osborne, The Master Musicians: Rossini. J.M. Dent & Sons Ltd, London & Melbourne, 1986.
The Opera Scribe 
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