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Home , Gioachino Rossini, La gazza ladra, La pietra del paragone, Overture, Philip Gossett, Victor de Sabata

PROGRAM NOTES by Phillip Huscher

Gioachino Rossini Born February 29, 1792, , . Died November 13, 1868, Passy, a suburb of Paris, France.

Overture to

The premiere of La gazza ladra (The thieving magpie) was given at Teatro alla Scala in on May 31, 1817. The is scored for an consisting of one and one piccolo, two , two , two , four horns, two , one , , percussion, and strings. Performance time is approximately ten minutes.

The Orchestra's first subscription concert performances of Rossini's Overture to La gazza ladrawere given at Orchestra Hall on October 6 and 7, 1949, with Victor De Sabata .

Time has not been kind to Rossini. Today he is identified with a handful of comic (often dismissed as implausible and silly, and frequently staged as sophomoric slapstick) and a dozen or so , the most famous of which brings to mind a television cowboy who rode high in the ratings from 1949 until 1965 instead of the heroic figure of . The opening sentence of 's article in The New Grove offers a healthy corrective: "No in the first half of the nineteenth century enjoyed the measure of prestige, wealth, popular acclaim or artistic influence that belonged to Rossini."

Rossini was born less than three months after the death of Mozart ("He was the wonder of my youth," Rossini later wrote, "the despair of my maturity, and he is the consolation of my old age"), was a professional contemporary of Beethoven and Schubert (as well as the young Mendelssohn and Berlioz), and lived into the era of Wagner and Brahms. But he retired in 1830, at the height of his career, leaving behind the world of where he had reigned since 1812, when his triumphed at . During the remaining four decades of his life, he didn't write another opera (for a while he contemplated a treatment of Goethe's ), choosing instead to preside over his celebrated (one of the most famous in all Europe) and to putter in the kitchen (tournédos Rossini are his most famous concoction). Only occasionally did he put pen to manuscript paper.

The second decade of the nineteenth century was Rossini's heyday, and in the middle years of that decade he turned out a rapid-fire string of delectable works for the stage that has rarely been matched: and The Italian Girl in Algiersin 1813, The Turk in Italy the following year, The Barber of in 1816, and Cenerentola andLa gazza ladra in the first half of 1817. Although the La gazza ladra isn't performed as often today as its neighboring comedies, it was a great success in its day. "I was myself in the audience for that first performance of La gazza ladra," Stendahl writes in his classic Life of Rossini, the first book written about the composer, "and it was one of the most glittering, the most single-minded triumphs I have ever witnessed." The Victorian critic Henry Chorley once remarked that every great Rossini overture opens differently. Even so, the overture to La gazza ladra is certainly striking, with its antiphonal snare drum rolls—a sure-fire way to get the audience's attention—followed by a grand military march. "It is an experience which can scarcely fail to make a vivid impression," Stendahl wrote. Both in the introduction and in the rapid that follows, buoyed by an irresistible fast , and capped by one of Rossini's celebrated crescendos, the composer is working on the grand scale. The opening night La Scala audience apparently appreciated both the beauty and novelty of the overture, and, according to Stendahl, even the "crabbedest, the oldest, the most cantankerous" spectators were left squealing with delight.

Phillip Huscher is the program annotator for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.

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These notes appear in galley files and may contain typographical or other errors. Programs subject to change without notice.