Rossini

Cavour definì la lirica come una vera e grande industria che ha ramificazioni in tutto il mondo. L’affermazione dello statista, valida ancora oggi, non solo dimostra l’importanza economica di questa complessa forma d’arte, ma implica necessariamente il ricorso a un vasto corpus normativo che ne consenta il funzionamento.
Il presente volume intende, pertanto, analizzare le regole di diritto privato che disciplinano l’attività di un teatro lirico, concentrandosi, in particolar modo, sugli aspetti contrattuali. L’opera evidenzia la forte influenza che gli usi originati nella prassi teatrale esplicano ancora oggi e avanza alcune proposte di riforma tese a rendere più efficiente il sistema della lirica in Italia e a riequilibrare la situazione di svantaggio nella quale, di norma, l’artista lirico si trova ad operare.
Una riflessione su questi aspetti appare oggi di particolare interesse, stante l’annunciata adozione, da parte del Ministero dei beni culturali, di un Codice dello Spettacolo che andrà a ridisciplinare anche il funzionamento dei teatri lirici.

The popularity and controversy of Rossini’s Otello in France has previously been linked to two important contexts: it relied on French sources (especially Jean-Francois Ducis’s play of the same name) and arrived at a moment of burgeoning Shakespearemania in France. Yet, a third important context remains unexamined: the opera speaks to issues of race and slavery that were urgently debated at the time in France. I explore these issues through the lens of the Willow Song, which contains a crucial and previously unexplored detail that appears in no other ver-sion of Shakespeare’s play: the song was taught to Desdemona by an enslaved African person, and thus dramatizes the potential for musical and personal rela-tionships between free and enslaved persons. I argue that restoring this forgotten context allows us to understand the ways this work may have spoken to anxieties around race and slavery in Restoration France, as well as how we might attend to these issues in the present.

The Barber of Seville and The Marriage of Figaro are two of the most frequently performed operas in the repertory. Yet some fail to realize that the Rosina in Rossini’s Il barbiere di Siviglia is the same character as the Countess in Mozart’s equally renowned Le nozze di Figaro. Furthermore, an even smaller percentage of operagoers seem aware that the Countess Almaviva, who is wronged by the Count’s infidelity, eventually becomes an adulterer herself by having a child with Cherubino. This study will explore and contrast different musical realizations of the character of Rosina from Figaro trilogy by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais (1732-1799), therefore a brief overview of the plays is provided as a frame of reference and a springboard for character development. More than forty operas have been written which are derived from the Beaumarchais trilogy or its characters, but this study is limited to the consideration of five operas. These works have been selected on the basis of their significance both musical and historically. Most importantly these five operas have been chosen because of their insights into the character of Rosina.

Consacré à la production d’opéras italiens, chantés dans la langue originale, le Théâtre-Italien de Paris est l’une des institutions artistiques les plus décisives du premier XIXe siècle. Mais ses chanteurs sont-ils aussi acteurs ? Que font, sur la scène des Italiens, des artistes aussi célèbres que Manuel García, Giuditta Pasta ou Maria Malibran ? Comment leurs publics décrivent-ils leurs pratiques scéniques et l’émotion qu’ils éprouvent à les regarder ? Voix et gestes enfuis, seules restent des impressions ou plutôt, des souvenirs d’impressions, tissées d’évidences pour les contemporains, perdues pour nous. Pour en retrouver la trace, sont croisés témoignages de spectateurs, sources littéraires, iconographiques et administratives souvent inédites. Car le talent de l’acteur-chanteur, quand il a quitté la scène, existe encore, et surtout, dans le souvenir de ceux qui l’ont vu.
Cet ouvrage s’accompagne d’une chronologie synthétique des
spectacles représentés au Théâtre royal Italien de 1815 à 1848
ainsi que d’un dictionnaire de plus de 220 entrées répertoriant ses chanteurs.

Il volume inquadra l’ascesa creativa di Verdi sullo sfondo dello choc provocato dall’arrivo sulle scene italiane del grand opéra: un nuovo tipo di spettacolo, proveniente da Parigi, celebrato dalla generazione romantica come la quintessenza della modernità. Attraverso la consultazione di numerose fonti e sfruttando il contributo di diversi settori disciplinari, tale studio ricostruisce per la prima volta in maniera sistematica le complesse vicende riguardanti l’incontro-scontro tra questo peculiare genere – che portava alla ribalta le masse e la storia – e una realtà italiana allora percorsa da vigorosi fermenti. Già sulla base del semplice dato quantitativo il fenomeno del grand opéra importato non appare così irrilevante come finora si è ritenuto: dal 1827 al 1848 varcarono le Alpi dodici grands opéras (variamente tradotti, adattati o riscritti) di compositori quali Rossini, Auber, Meyerbeer, Halévy, Donizetti, per un totale, tra “prime” rappresentazioni e riprese, di un paio di migliaia di spettacoli. Ma ancora più interessante è la spinta dinamica che tale repertorio fu in grado di imprimere tanto al processo di rinnovamento della cultura italiana (non solo musicale), quanto alla sfera della rigenerazione politica e delle lotte per la libertà: una spinta che, capitalizzata soprattutto da Verdi, ci permette d’interpretare le opere di questo periodo, e lo stesso Risorgimento, secondo una più illuminante prospettiva europea.

The unusual aria forms employed by Rossini, linked to a specific dramatic
meaning, prominently include the romance, found in La Cenerentola
and Otello. The romance, originally from Spain, became widespread
in France in the second half of the eighteenth century, especially
in opéras comiques. The essay discusses the two romances «Una volta,
c’era un re» and «Assisa al piè di un salice» in the context, on the one hand, of French works on Cinderella, starting with Perrault’s fairy
tale, and, on the other, of French translations of Shakespeare’s Othello.
Among other findings, this contextualization reveals a potential source
for Desdemona’s melody.

The essay explores the reception of Rossini’s Italian operas in the writings of Étienne-Jean Delécluze. A leading figure in the Parisian cultural milieu of his time, Delécluze reviewed performances at the Théâtre-Italien for the influential «Journal des débats» between 1832 and 1863. He developed an interpretative frame based on the idea that the Théâtre-Italien should function as as a “school of singing” for Paris,
and identified Rossini’s operas as canonical texts that such a school
should preserve and promote, in opposition to more recent trends
originating from Italy. The breakdown of this cultural project, which
had met with some significant public support, is probably linked to the
structural crisis of the Théâtre-Italien in the 1860s.

During all the XVIII century, Naples was famous for being the most prolific musical city in the whole Europe. This huge musical activity got somehow lost during the "French decade" (1805-1815) which followed the rise of Napoleon: opera lost much of its quality and there was a lack of important composers at that time. The thesis analyzes how Gioacchino Rossini, who arrived in Naples in 1815 invited by the Impresario Domenico Barbaja, succeeded to reform the Neapolitan opera of the previous century gaining the approval of the local audience and giving to the city a fresh musical start in the early Romantic period. Language: GERMAN

Forza italiana- Notas al programa de concierto
Concierto: Orquesta Sinfónica de la Región de Murcia, Alberto Velasco (fagot) y Sylvain Gasançon (director)
Sábado, 30 de abril 2016
Auditorio y Centro de Congresos “Víctor Villegas de Murcia”

Roma, a cura dell'autore 2018 (seconda edizione)
Licenza Creative Commons 4.0 internazionale
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Riflessioni sui dati araldici inerenti al cognome Rossini, con particolare attenzione allo stemma del celebre compositore Gioachino
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Reflections on heraldic data related to the surname Rossini, with particular attention to the coat-of-arms of the famous composer Gioachino

A discussion of Rossini's opera La cenerentola (Cinderella), its historical context, and its relation to the European fairy tale tradition, written as the program note to The San Diego Opera's fall 2016 performance of Rossini's La cenerentola

A partire dalla metà degli anni ’80 del 1700 a Napoli e in altre piazze teatrali italiane venne aggiunta al calendario operistico una stagione in tempo di quaresima caratterizzata da opere su soggetto veterotestamentario. Da questo momento prende avvio e si consolida una tradizione di sacrodrammi biblici che giungerà fino al Nabucodonosor di Giuseppe Verdi e Temistocle Solera (1842), di fatto e di diritto appartenente alla predetta tradizione. Il libro delinea aspetti di drammaturgia e di strategia produttiva di questo repertorio, esamina la tradizione precedente e la successiva ricezione di sacrodrammi esemplari come il Mosè in Egitto di Rossini, considera le diverse motivazioni che le politiche culturali in Italia degli anni rivoluzionari, poi giacobini indi della Restaurazione hanno espresso per ora sostenere, ora tollerare questo particolare filone operistico.

L’ouvrage dirigé par Jean Mongrédien – Le Théâtre-Italien de Paris. 1801-1831 – et le site internet qui l’accompagne permettent de mener des recherches sur les mots utilisés dans les périodiques du début du XIXe siècle pour rendre compte de l’activité de cette institution lyrique parisienne. Une recherche « sédu* » donne pour résultats 424 occurrences de mots commençant par ces quatre lettres (séducteur, séductrice, séduire, séduite, séduisant…). On s’intéressera à l’usage global qui est fait de ces termes dans le corpus réuni par Jean Mongrédien (fréquence, définition des termes et des objets qu’ils qualifient) avant d’aborder trois thèmes majeurs qui apparaissent au cours de leur analyse : la place de la séduction dans les livrets des œuvres jouées au Théâtre-Italien ; la séduction des interprètes ; et celle opérée par la musique.

The volume edited by Jean Mongrédien, Le Théâtre-Italien de Paris. 1801-1831, and the website which accompanies it, make it possible to search for words used in periodicals which recounted the goings-on of this theater in the early 19th century. A search for “sedu*” results in 424 hits of words beginning with these four letters (seducer, seduce, seduced, seductive...). The present article looks at the overall use of these terms in the body of work collected by Jean Mongrédien (their frequency, definition of the terms and the objects they qualify), followed by an investigation of three major themes that emerge from this analysis: seduction’s role in the printed programs of the works played at the Théâtre-Italien, the musicians’ seduction, and that of the music.

In the context of several theories pointing out the link between psychopathology and artistic creativity the aim of this retrospective investigation, based on Rossini’s various biographies, is to bring into focus the possible impact of the bipolar spectrum disorders and, comorbidly, syphilis on Rossini’s artistic personality. In the first half of his life he was astonishingly prolific, and composed nearly forty operas by the age of 38, many of them being the key to the repertories of modern opera companies worldwide. Several biographies show that his severe manic-depressive sufferings or rather his cyclothymic symptoms played a role in that withdrawal and silence, while in his youth his hypomanic personality traits (e.g. over-inclusive thinking, richness of associations) most probably contributed to the extreme achievements and amazingly fast composing techniques. The available biographies of Rossini and also the kind of music he composed (e.g. bel canto, opera buffa, Rossini crescendo) strongly suggest the medical diagnosis of a bipolar affective illness. His cognitive traits, for one thing, fall into his hypomanic symptomatology – the bipolar mood disorder was actually overrepresented in the composers of those times.

These liner notes for the 1997 Gruberova, Chernov, Florez "Barbiere" CD set published by Nightingale examines the origins of one of the greatest operas, and possibly the most performed of all. Booed by  biased spectators who supported Paisiello, Rossini's masterpiece went on to eclipse all existing operas on the same subject, including Paisiello's.  Beethoven himself had to admit that "as long as Italian opera exists Il barbiere di Siviglia will be performed".

To talk about the Frenchness of Le comte Ory might sounds like provocation. Being basically a rifacimento of his Viaggio a Reims, Rossini's penultimate stage work belongs to the corpus of Italo-French operas. Yet there are three reasons for looking at Le comte Ory as an authentic French opera. Firstly, in the newly composed parts of the work, Rossini avoided the traditional features of the closed numbers typical of the Italian tradition by inserting recitatives inside the numbers and by merging closed numbers and subsequent recitatives, especially at the end of Act II. Secondly, the French lines written by Scribe to fit the already composed music follow poetic patterns from the Middle Ages, of which the prosodic features were closer to Italian than Classical French. Last, the very choice of the legend of Ory is typical of the trouba-dour style that had been fashionable in Paris since the last decades of the 18 th century, and it turns out that this particular legend was extremely popular back then, as witnessed by the variety of local variants that were published in the 19 th century.

RÉSUMÉ

Le théâtre français est caractérisé dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle par une intense production qui trouve sa meilleure illustration dans l’exemple d’Eugène Scribe (1791-1861), surnommé « le fournisseur breveté de toute espèce de denrée dramatique » par Théophile Gautier en 1838. Élu à l’Académie française en 1834, Scribe est l’auteur de 425 pièces de théâtre, dont 249 vaudevilles, 94 livrets d’opéras-comiques, trente-deux comédies, trente livrets d’opéras, dix drames, huit arguments de ballets et deux pantomimes, et connaît de son vivant un succès dont l’ampleur est largement méconnue aujourd’hui. Pas moins de cinquante-trois musiciens travaillent avec lui à la composition d’opéras-comiques, d’opéras et de ballets. Habitué à la fréquentation assidue des musiciens et des théâtres lyriques parisiens, le dramaturge n’hésite pas à insérer un nombre relativement important d’instrumentistes, de chanteurs, de danseurs, de chefs d’orchestre, de directeurs de théâtre et de compositeurs parmi les protagonistes de ses pièces de théâtre et de ses livrets. L’objet du présent article consiste dans l’étude générale des personnages de compositeurs et de leurs différentes représentations dans l’ensemble de l’œuvre dramatique de Scribe. Une douzaine de ces personnages sont analysés de manière plus approfondie. Scribe utilise souvent l’humour et les stéréotypes pour présenter les difficiles débuts de carrière et la pauvreté des jeunes compositeurs français. Président de la Société des Auteurs et Compositeurs Dramatiques durant de nombreuses années, il s’efforce autant qu’il le peut de faire l’éloge de l’école française confrontée, à partir des années 1820, à la rude concurrence des opéras rossiniens. Il n’oublie pas d’évoquer le parcours privilégié du jeune compositeur français qui consiste alors en des études accomplies au Conservatoire de Paris et suivies par l’obtention du prix de Rome. Les arrangeurs d’opéras allemands et italiens, tels que Castil-Blaze, sont sévèrement critiqués pour leur manque de patriotisme. En outre, Scribe présente les compositeurs étrangers, qu’ils soient italiens ou allemands, comme des intrigants qui cherchent à favoriser leur carrière par des méthodes non musicales. Le dramaturge se moque enfin des frontières poreuses entre musique lyrique et musique religieuse en Italie et fait constamment référence à Rossini dans l’ensemble de ses pièces.

ABSTRACT

In the first half of the nineteenth century, French theatre was characterized by an intense level of production best illustrated in the example of Eugène Scribe (1791-1861), nicknamed “the official supplier of any kind of dramatic product” by Théophile Gautier in 1838. Elected to the French Academy in 1834, Scribe was the author of 425 plays, including 249 vaudevilles, 94 librettos of opéras-comiques, thirty-two comedies, thirty librettos of operas, ten dramas, eight ballet plots and two pantomimes, and enjoyed during his lifetime a success the extent to which is largely unknown at present. No less than fifty-three musicians worked with him in composing opéras-comiques, operas and ballets. Used to being surrounded by musicians and used to high numbers of attendance in Parisian musical theatres, the playwright did not hesitate to include a relatively large number of instrumentalists, singers, dancers, conductors, theatrical managers and composers among the protagonists of his plays and librettos. This article is a comprehensive study of characters of composers and of their different representations in the complete dramatic works of Scribe. A dozen of these characters are analysed in more detail. Scribe often uses humour and stereotypes in order to present the difficult beginnings of their careers and the poverty of young French composers. As President of the Society of Dramatic Authors and Composers for many years, he tried as much as possible to praise the French school which faced, from the 1820s, fierce competition from Rossini’s operas. He does not forget to mention the preferred path of the young French composer, namely studies completed at the Paris Conservatory and followed by the Prix de Rome. Arrangers of German and Italian operas, like Castil-Blaze, are severely criticised for their lack of patriotism. In addition, Scribe presented foreign composers, whether they are Italian or German, as schemers who seek to advance their careers by non-musical methods. Finally, the dramaturg made fun of the porous borders between opera and religious music in Italy and made constant references to Rossini in all of his plays.

RÉSUMÉ. La théorie du philosophe Henri Bergson, selon laquelle le rire est produit par « Du mécanique plaqué sur du vivant », permet de rendre compte en partie de la production du comique dans les opere buffe de Rossini à travers différents procédés, dont la répétition de mots ou d’onomatopées, la récurrence de cadences harmoniques stéréotypées, le crescendo d’orchestre et l’emploi de répliques brèves et symétriques dans un tempo rapide. La répétition d’onomatopées – qu’il s’agisse de rires, d’exclamations, d’interjections, de mélodies solfiées, de l’imitation d’instruments de musique, de sons humains corporels, de cris d’animaux, de bruits d’objets, etc. – est un procédé comique traditionnel de l’opera buffa, souvent associé à l’emploi de basso buffo, que s’approprient les compositeurs d’opéras-comiques et de komische Opern dans leurs propres ouvrages entre 1815 et 1848, et s’affirme comme une constante du répertoire comique européen.

ABSTRACT. The theory of the philosopher Henri Bergson, according to which laughter is produced by “a mechanical element superimposed on a living being”, allows to partly account for the comical aspect in Rossini’s opere buffe. The comical effect is obtained by various methods, among which the repetition of words or onomatopoeias, the recurrence of stereotypical harmonical cadences, the crescendo of the orchestra and the employment of brief and symmetrical cues at a fast tempo. The repetition of onomatopoeias –whether it be laughter, exclamations, interjections, imitations of musical instruments, of human bodily sounds, of animal noises, of objects rattling, etc.– is a traditional comical strategy in the opera buffa, often associated with the use of the basso buffo, which the composers of opéras-comiques and komische Opern adapt to fit their own works between 1815 and 1848. The repetition of onomatopoeias asserts itself as a constant in the European repertoire of comic.