302. Gioachino Rossini: 1813 to 1817

Composer: Gioachino Rossini.

Tancredi (1813)

• Melodramma eroico in 2 acts
• Libretto: Gaetano Rossi, after Voltaire’s Tancrède
• First performed: Teatro La Fenice, Venice, 6^th February 1813

Rossini’s breakthrough came in 1813, with the opera seria Tancredi and the buffa L’italiana in Algeri. Tancredi is a melancholy work with one foot still in the old world of 18^th century opera seria. In it, Rossini codified the scena structure — lyrical cantabile, dramatic tempo di mezzo, and virtuosic cabaletta — defining bel canto form for decades (the coda Rossini). Every composer in Italy, as Pacini admitted, had to imitate Rossini to succeed. The chief musical unit is the aria or duet, often with chorus; the concerted pieces typical of his later Naples period are reserved for the Act I finale. Old-fashioned though it may seem today, Tancredi was, Henry Sutherland Edwards noted, “new, strikingly new, in the year 1813, when Mozart’s great operas had scarcely been heard out of Germany”. (See full review here.)

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L’italiana in Algeri (1813)

• Dramma giocoso in 2 acts
• Libretto: Angelo Anelli
• First performed: Teatro San Benedetto, Venice, 22^nd May 1813, probably conducted by Alessandro Rolla

MUSTAFÀ, Bey of Algiers	Bass	Filippo Galli
ELVIRA, his wife	Soprano	Luttgard Annibaldi
ZULMA, slave confidante of Elvira	Mezzo	Annunziata Berni Chelli
HALY, captain of the Algerian corsairs	Tenor or bass	Giuseppe Spirito
LINDORO, young Italian, Mustafà’s favourite slave	Tenor	Serafino Gentili
ISABELLA, an Italian lady	Contralto	Marietta Marcolini
TADDEO, Isabella’s companion	Buffo	Paolo Rosich
Eunuchs in the seraglio. Algerian corsairs. Italian slaves. Pappataci.	Chorus

SETTING: Algiers

Punch once depicted the indomitable Isabella, the Italian heroine, as a champion of second-wave feminism, teaching put-upon wives to stand up to their erring husbands — although Edward Said might have taken issue with an opera in which a liberated European woman takes on a misogynistic Muslim world depicted as a where women are born to suffer and obey.

L’Italiana in Algeri is the first of Rossini’s three great popular comedies. It belongs to the genre of harem operas, such as Gluck’s Rencontre imprévue, Grétry’s Caravane du Caire, or Mozart’s Abduction from the Seraglio. In those operas, the woman is often passive, the rescuee not the rescuer; Isabella, however, rescues her rather wet boyfriend Lindoro from captivity, and runs rings around the bey Mustafà who claims to punish women’s arrogance — “So a domar gli uomini come si fa,” she declares. She brings Mustafà to heel, reunites him with his long-suffering wife, and escapes with Lindoro and her elderly admirer.

The opera adapted an earlier libretto set by Luigi Mosca in 1808. Rossini claimed to have composed the music in 18 days (27 is more likely). The work was a success: on the first night, the Giornale dippartimentale dell’Adriatico reported “deafening, continuous general applause” and predicted it “will find a place among the finest works of art”. The morning after, while Venice nursed its hangover, Rossini joked: “I thought that after hearing my work they would have taken me for a madman. Now I am at ease. The Venetians have shown themselves to be crazier than I am.” It was soon performed in Germany (Munich, 1816) and Paris (1817), the first Rossini opera performed there.

Highlights:

• The overture — which has been compared to a husband sneaking home in the dark after a night on the tiles, and knocking over the grandfather clock
• Act I finale: the septet ‘Confusi e stupidi, incerti pendono’ and the confusion ensemble ‘Va sossopra il mio cervello’, perhaps the most demented of Rossini’s Act I finales, an onomatopoeiac hullaballoo in which, language and reason having abandoned them, the characters imitate bells, hammers, crows and cannons
• Act II: The sneezing quintet ‘Ti presento di mia man’, especially the quartet ‘Maledetto quel balordo’

Recordings: Jennife Larmore, Raúl Giménez, John Del Carlo, Alessandro Corbelli, with the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne, conducted by Jesús López Cobos, 1997.

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Aureliano in Palmira (1813)

• Melodramma serio in 2 acts
• Libretto: G. F. R., after Zenobia di Palmira by Pasquale Anfossi
• First performed: La Scala, Milan, 26^th December 1813, conducted by Alessandro Rolla

AURELIANO [Aurelian], Emperor of Rome	Tenor	Luigi Mari
ZENOBIA, Queen of Palmyra, lover of	Soprano	Lorenza Corrèa
ARSACE, Prince of Persia	Alto castrato	Giovanni Battista Velluti
PUBLIA, daughter of Valerian, Arsace’s secret lover	Mezzo	Luigi Sorrentini
ORASPE, Palmyrene general	Tenor	Gaetano Pozzi
LICINIO, a tribune	Bass	Pietro Vasoli
HIGH PRIEST of Isis	Bass	Vincenzo Botticelli
Priests, Palmyrene maidens, Palmyrene, Persian, and Roman soldiers; shepherds and shepherdesses; Roman, Palmyrene, Persian soldiers

SETTING: Palmyra, c. 271–72 CE

Aureliano in Palmira was Rossini’s only opera for a castrato: Giambattista Vellutto, who sang Arsace. It opened La Scala’s winter / carnival season; although the Corriere Milanese considered it boring, it was performed 14 times, and later staged in Europe and South America. While not as bad as Ciro in Babilonia, Aureliano — another story of invasion and resistance in the ancient world — is one of Rossini’s weakest operas, belonging to a group of forgotten and forgettable opere serie. The Roman emperor Aurelian (r. 270–275), restitutor orbis, conquers the Palmyrene Empire to regain Rome’s lost eastern provinces, and falls in love with its queen, Zenobia; he demands that she marry him in exchange for peace, but she refuses to yield.

The overture is better known to the world as the Barber of Seville’s; the tune comes from Arsace’s Act III aria. Richard Osborne says the opera is “full of exquisite things”, and praises “some tender pastoral writing”, but it seems impersonal and uninspired; one can’t help but feel that an 18^th-century composer would have made a better job of it: a series of da capo arias would have provided more melody. The depiction of displaced people as victims of war — expressing their grief in choral laments like ‘O cara selve’, with its longing for “libertà” — anticipates Verdi’s Nabucco. Oddly, it is an opera in which the Italians are antagonists, and the libretto’s sympathy is with their subjugated enemies.

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Il turco in Italia (1814)

• Dramma buffo in 2 acts
• Libretto: Felice Romani, after Caterino Mazzolà’s libretto for Franz Joseph Seydelmann’s opera (1788)
• First performed: Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 14 August 1814

Il Turco in Italia anticipates the dramas of Pirandello with its device of a playwright who manipulates the drama to provide copy for his next play. Unlike Rossini’s sunnier comedies, Turco is cooler, more ambiguous, and almost a problem-play. Milanese audiences dismissed it as a rehash of L’ italiana in Algeri, and it languished until its 1950 revival with Maria Callas. (See full review.)

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Sigismondo (1814)

• Dramma serio per musica
• Libretto: Giuseppe Maria Foppa
• First performed: La Fenice, Venice, 26^th December 1814

SIGISMONDO, King of Poland	Contralto	Marietta Marcolini
ULDERICO, King of Bohemia	Bass	Luciano Bianchi
ALDIMIRA, his daughter, Sigismondo’s consort	Soprano	Elisabetta Manfredini-Guarmani
LADISLAO, Sigismondo’s prime minister	Tenor	Claudio Bonoldi
ANAGILDA, his sister	Soprano	Marianna Rossi
ZENOVITO, a Polish nobleman	Bass	Luciano Bianchi
RADOSKI, Ladislao’s confidant	Tenor	Domenico Bartoli
Ladislao’s followers Hunters Polish and Hungarian soldiers	Chorus

SETTING: Gdansk, former capital of Poland; woods and mountainous places close to the same.

Sigismondo has a bad reputation. Rossini himself thought it boring, and described it as a fiasco to his mother. Later critics have not been enthusiastic: R. Osborne calls it “a dull and difficult piece”, while Julian Budden considers it “good to hear once, but definitely not for the repertoire”. It is a minor work, undoubtedly, but an enjoyable one: it is less florid and more tuneful than Ciro, and more engaging than Aureliano. The story is the same as L’Inganno felice, Rossini’s early one-act farsa: Sigismond, king of Poland, believed his wife, Aldimira, had cheated on him, and condemned her to death, but she was rescued, and is living under a false name. The villain is Sigismondo’s advisor, Ladislao, who lied about the queen when she spurned him. Much of the music was recycled in later works.

Highlight:

• Duet ‘Tanti affetti ho intorno al core’: pleasant
• The Ladislao / Aldimira duet with the final section ‘Dubbiosa, smarrita’
• Act II: chorus ‘Viva Aldimira’ — fun, a splash of extraversion
• Quartet ‘Genitor… Deh, vien!’

Recordings: Marianna Pizzolato, Kenneth Tarver, Hera Hyesang Park, and Il Hong, with the Münchner Radiofunkorchester, conducted by Keri-Lynn Wilson.

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Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815)

• Dramma per musica in 2 acts
• Libretto: Giovanni Schmidt, after Carlo Federici’s Il paggio di Leicester, itself after Sophia Lee’s novel The Recess (1785)
• First performed: Teatro San Carlo, Naples, 4 October 1815

Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra marked Rossini’s début at Naples’s prestigious Teatro San Carlo. Its impresario, Domenico Barbaja, was no music lover, but he knew what the public would enjoy. Rossini later ran off with his mistress, Isabella Colbran, who sang the title rôle. The score is largely a patchwork of recycled material, stronger on vocal display rather than inspiration. However, the work was a success — Stendhal reported that the Neapolitans were drunk with pleasure — and Barbaja offered Rossini a contract to write two new operas a year, and to work as musical director of the Teatro San Carlo and the Teatro del Fondo. Eight more operas followed, some of them among Rossini’s most ambitious works. (See full review.)

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Torvaldo e Dorliska (1815)

• Dramma semiserio in 2 acts
• Libretto: Cesare Sterbini, after Francesco Gonella’s Lodoïska
• First performed: Teatro Valle, Rome, 26 December 1815

Torvaldo e Dorliska is Rossini’s contribution to the rescue genre popularised by Cherubini. It was a flop at its première, but was performed throughout Europe until the 1830s. (See full review.)

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Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816)

• Opera buffa in 2 acts
• Libretto: Cesare Sterbini, after Beaumarchais
• First performed: Teatro Argentina, Rome, 20 February 1816

Rossini’s most popular opera, The Barber of Seville was composed in 13 days, and premièred under the cautious title of Almaviva to appease those who took umbrage at the young composer challenging Paisiello’s 1782 opera. The first performance was a notorious fiasco, marred by sabotage, a hostile audience, stage mishaps (including a rogue cat) and unrelenting noise, but the opera triumphed the second night. Verdi considered it the most beautiful opera buffa ever written, Beethoven told Rossini to write more Barbers, and the elderly Wagner dropped in on performances incognito. (See full review.)

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La gazzetta (1816)

• Dramma per musica
• Libretto: Giuseppe Palomba, based on Carlo Goldoni’s Il matrimonio per concorso
• First performed: Teatro dei Fiorentini, Naples, 24^th September 1816

D. POMPONIO STORIONE, a fanatical and ambitious man, Lisetta’s father	Bass	Carlo Casaccia
LISETTA, a shrewd and foolish woman, Filippo’s lover	Soprano	Margherita Chambrend
FILIPPO, innkeeper, an astute and bizarre youth, Lisetta’s lover	Baritone	Felice Pellegrini
DORALICE, a traveller	Soprano	Francesca Cardini
ANSELMO, her father	Bass	Giovanni Pace
ALBERTO, a well-born youth, who is travelling to find a wife that suits him	Tenor	Alberigo Curioni
MADAMA LA ROSE, a traveller	Mezzo	Maria Manzi
MONSU’ Traversen	Bass	Francesco Sparano

Tearing himself briefly away from the arms and the charms of Isabella Colbran, Rossini wrote La Gazzetta, his only comedy for Naples — a chaotic mess whose best music is second-hand. Most of the numbers are recycled from previous operas (La pietra del paragone, Il turco in Italia, Torvaldo e Dorliska), while the plot is incoherent: Don Pomponio advertises his daughter for marriage in the Classifieds; other characters dress up as Quakers or as Turks. The Neapolitans were not pleased, and the opera was withdrawn after a few performances. It was revived in Palermo in 1828, then forgotten about until the late twentieth century.

The only way of making such an olla podrida of an opera palatable, playwright Dario Fo apparently thought, was to double down on the absurdity. He raises Bakhtin’s carnivalesque to the degree of insanity: blurring boundaries between performer and spectator, and subverting order. Gods help the audience, in fact. There are entire inserted scenes in Neapolitan dialect; fowl play from puppet chickens; and jokes about cretins and Cretans. Don Pomponio argues with the conductor and tells him he won’t make it through the evening. His daughter swoons and dies; dad tells her this is an opera buffa, so she’ll be fine. He runs around the theatre with a giant balloon, hitting people. Duellists toss bombs. Safari animals prance about the stage, singers waltz with sex dummies, and chimpanzees hand out newspapers. Confetti fall from the roof, newspapers are waved, and singers twirl, whirl, and collapse. And well they might. The audience’s sanity has long since done the same.

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Otello (1816)

• Dramma in 3 acts
• Libretto: Francesco Maria Berio di Salsa, after Shakespeare
• First performed: Teatro del Fondo, Naples, 4 December 1816

Although decried by Lord Byron, Otello was once considered among Rossini’s most dramatic and accomplished works, and held the stage until Verdi’s adaptation of Shakespeare eclipsed it in 1887. — A travesty of Shakespeare, likely based on a French adaptation, it relocates the action entirely to Venice, minimises Iago’s rôle, and elevates Rodrigo to near co-lead status. The third act, which includes Desdemona’s haunting Willow Song and tempestuous murder scene, was hailed as a pinnacle of Rossini’s serious style, admired by Meyerbeer among others. (See full review.)

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La Cenerentola (1817)

• Dramma giocoso in 2 acts
• Libretto: Jacopo Ferretti
• First performed: Teatro Valle, Rome, 25 January 1817

La Cenerentola is the most sophisticated and heartfelt of Rossini’s three major comic operas. Stripped of fairy-tale magic, it instead focuses on virtue rewarded, a philosopher taking the part of the fairy godmother. Rossini and librettist Ferretti quickly wrote the opera over Christmas 1816. Although coolly received at first, it soon became second in popularity only to The Barber of Seville among Rossini’s comic operas. (See full review.)

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La gazza ladra (1817)

• Melodramma in 2 acts
• Libretto: Giovanni Gherardini, after La pie voleuse by Théodore Baudouin d’Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez
• First performed: Teatro alla Scala, Milan, 31 May 1817

La Gazza ladra marks a turning point in Italian opera, introducing naturalistic characters and domestic drama to opera seria. Based on a French play inspired by a real-life miscarriage of justice, it concerns a servant girl wrongly condemned for theft, only for the culprit to be revealed as a magpie. Although Milan’s musical élite were hostile at first, the dazzling overture immediately won them over, and the première became a triumph. While La Gazza ladra is among Rossini’s longest and most meandering operas, its innovations in tone and subject matter paved the way for the next generation of composers. (See full review.)