english 1 GIOACHINO ROSSINI LE SIÈGE DE CORINTHE LUCIANA SERRA // MARCELLO LIPPI // DANO RAFFANTI // PAOLO OLMI 2 PAMYRA · LUCIANA SERRA MAHOMET II · MARCELLO LIPPI CLÉOMÈNE · DANO RAFFANTI NÉOCLÈS · MAURIZIO COMENCINI HIÉROS · ARMANDO CAFORIO ADRASTE · VITO MARTINO OMAR · FRANCESCO FACINI ISMÈNE · FRANCESCA PROVVISIONATO ORCHESTRA E CORO DEL TEATRO CARLO FELICE DI GENOVA PRAGUE PHILHARMONIC CHOIR CHORUS MASTER: GIANFRANCO COSMI PAOLO OLMI LE SIÈGE PRODUCTION: DANILO PREFUMO SOUND ENGINEER: VALTER B. NERI RECORDING: TEATRO CARLO FELICE, GENOA – JULY 1992 DE CORINTHE 3 GIOACHINO ROSSINI (1792-1868) LE SIÈGE Tragédie lyrique en trois actes DE CORINTHE de Luigi Balocchi et Alexandre Soumet Vol 1 Vol 2 6 english FROM NEGROPONTE TO CORINTH: To claim, as some have done, that the poetics of THE STORY OF A SIEGE the elder Rossini offer signs of serious progressive Semiramide (1823), that exemplary non plus ultra ferment, overtures towards a feeling that will of a system that had reached the utmost limits be the domain of Bellini or Donizetti, would of its own possibilities and of stylistic saturation be worse than a misconception, it would be a (and which for decades was to be used by Italian betrayal of that unswerving faith in the “bello opera composers, both great and small, as a well ideale”, ideal beauty (Rossini’s own expression), in their search for forms, structures, stylistic that is obtained through form, an ideal which elements, cliches and patterns that could be Rossini himself would never abandon throughout used as found or reshaped), was necessarily his career as a composer of opera and even after both a point of arrival and a turning point for in the years of his renunciation and his private, Rossini. He had come this far by stages, in steps ironic musical fornication. marked out by serious operas like Ermione, Maometto II, Zelmira which show a progressive Indeed, that philosophy of Restoration – made confluence of his creative energies leading up up of scepticism and patience, of mistrust to a monumental construction that he attained towards the future and of intensive exploitation via the development of formal macrostructures not of a past, which clearly cannot be brought of unique breadth and complexity, which, like back, but of a beauteous present whose fleeting the mighty arches vaulting between the pillars nature is equally certain – can scarcely be found of a bridge, created an ideal unity of musical and in a more marked form than in the poetics of dramatic design respecting and indeed exalting Rossini, a man who was convinced, as later the poetics of the closed-number opera. Giolitti in conflict with the interventionists english 7 would be, of that “great deal” which could Over a period of fifty years the history of French still be had, if only one knew how to, from the opera is identified with a series of Italian status quo, without “reforms” or revolution. Yet composers who became French – some for a when the old Maestro wrote to Tito Ricordi in long or short period, others for their whole 1866, asserting with three exclamation marks: lives – and who produced works whose respect “I was no crab!!!” (I did not go back on my own for an unfailing aesthetical and practical norm steps), he was in good faith. When he agreed to was, paradoxically, the source of their stylistic settle in Paris in late 1824 as co-director (with identity and of their innovative power. In this Paer) of the Théâtre Italien, Rossini implicitly sense and with a great leap of quality (as well institutionalised, so to speak, that shift in as of morphological choices), Didon and Iphigènie direction that a success like Semiramide was en Tauride by Piccinni, Salieri’s Les Danaïdes, to make inevitable if the composer were not to Sacchini’s Oedipe à Colone, Cherubini’s and repeat himself. Fifty years earlier with Iphigenie Spontini’s French operas stand out as goals of en Aulide Gluck had set tragédie-lyrique on a exceptional importance compared to the rest of path towards new destinies, and from that time the composers’ production; in some cases, indeed on every opera composer who intended to make (Cherubini and Spontini, for example) these works use of his talents in France had been obliged represent nothing less than the birth and growth to follow a route that was becoming ever more of a new musician, stepping forth after the clearly sign posted and that began with the labours of a radical stylistic regeneration. postulation of the need for quite radical change Rossini knew that the path he would have to if not of style and poetics at least of operatic follow in Paris was not that of the composer structures. of Médée or of Spontini, whose Fernand Cortez 8 english he had presented and directed in Naples in Only four years stood between him and that 1820; in very different historical and cultural definitive goal of Tell: four years that were to conditions Rossini was rather to retrace the change the face of French melodrama in the last steps of Piccinni or of Sacchini (the latter more and most striking of all its metamorphoses that so than the former for reasons that we shall see would transform tragédie-lyrique into grand later), two composers who had reached Paris opéra. And yet Rossini did not risk his arm by on the crest of their European successes as suddenly tackling the composition of a new writers of Italian operas and in full artistic and opera on a French text and, of course, in “French spiritual maturity. As a maëstro italien, Rossini style”, as the contract he had signed required. lost no time in paying his own tribute with the Following the example of Sacchini (who in Viaggio a Reims, a spectacle written to celebrate 1783 with Renaud and Chimène had offered the the coronation of Charles X; after this, having Parisian public two frenchified reelaborations of cleared the Italian field for the future exploits of previously written Italian operas), Rossini too Mercadante, Pacini, Donizetti and Bellini, he set thought it wise and prudent to feel his way into his sights on the Academie Royale, determined the new language and acquire experience by to occupy the space left by Cherubini, who had using two reelaborations. long since boated his oars, and by Spontini who For the first he chose Maometto II, the had moved to Berlin after the unsuccessful penultimate opera he wrote for the San Carlo in outcome of Olympic. His voyage was nearing Naples on a libretto by Cesare della Valle Duke its destination, and he, more selfaware and of Ventignano, performed unsuccessfully on 3rd longsighted than he is always thought to have December 1820. The second was, and the fact is been, may well have known it. well known, the Mosè in Egitto (1818-1819) that, english 9 in contrast, had been one of his greatest successes the XV century, the fall of Byzantium brought in Naples. Thus in his debut as a “French” opera about by the very young, terrible Sultan, whose composer, Rossini was not gambling but relying delicate features were portrayed by Gentile on the contents of chosen titles. In the instance Bellini. Having taken Constantinople, Mahomet of Maometto II these contents also offered the set his sights on the Venetian dominion of attraction of topical political reference. In April Negroponte; and thus the 1820 opera deals with 1826, the Turks recaptured Missolonghi; where Venetians and Turks. Adapted by Luigi Balocchi George Gordon Byron, rushing to the defence of (poet at the Théâtre Italien) and Alexandre Greek liberty, had sought a noble death (in vain, Soumet, the original libretto shifted its setting for his flight as a rebel archangel had come to an from Negroponte to Corinth; the Venetians end much more prosaically with rheumatic fever). Paolo Erisso, governor of Negroponte; Anna, his Philhellenism had captured the conscience of daughter; Calbo, a general, and Condulmiero, Europe, both among liberals and others; in France, another general, became Cléomène, governor of the restored Bourbons set their chancelleries Corinth; Pamira, his daughter; Néoclès, a young to work, proposing their candidacy for a Greece Greek officer; Hiéros, guardian of the sepulchres, independent of the Sublime Gate. with the addition of the minor parts of Adrasta Based on a tragedy, Anna Erizo, the work of that and of the confidente Ismène (the latter part same Della Valle (as Bruno Cagli has recently borrowed from Anna Erizo, a source which both determined, not, as is commonly held, drawn from adaptors clearly knew). Noteworthy, though Voltaire’s Le Fanatisme, on Mahomet le Prophète), perhaps not decisive, changes were made in the the libretto for Maometto II evokes events that plot, concerning the distribution of the scenes followed the tragedy that traumatised Europe in (changing the opera from two to three acts) and 10 english the exaltation of patriotic motives rather than religious self-immolation of the last act, this the psychology of the characters: one important new historical tableau acquires the romantic exception in this respect is to be found in the chiaro-scuro tints in which Rossini’s vessel is to new connotations of Pamira’s role, much more sail as if through unknown vortices, glimpsing receptive than Anna had been to the attraction for the first time perhaps the approaching of the lover found in the “cruel enemy”, ready Columns of Hercules that Rossini will never indeed to become involved in preparations for wish to or be able to cross. Conceived as an a marriage that will be avoided thanks to the Italian opera, Le siège de Corinthe maintained in surprise arrival of Néoclès as a prisoner in the general terms its own fundamental identity even Mussulman camp and the following signal of in its French guise, and this to a much greater the Greek counter-attack.