Rossini all downhill after the overture ?

[jean]

One thing which shouldn't go unremarked is Hans Werner Henze's adoration for the operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, whose music he saw as an inspirational antidote to the "heavy" (his word) Germanic post-Wagnerian influence on his own country's tradition...

How I agree!

[Dave2002]

The caption refers to a call for tenders associatied with fundraising [sic!]

I don't know what the image is of, but it doesn't correspond to any advertised performance of anything.

So it seems (perhaps) to be an unfortunate conjunction of material which might not be related to Rossini, nor the festival.
I did already comment on that

Maybe the photo is generic, and doesn’t apply.

[jean]

It's the Piazza del Popolo in Pesaro, but I don't think the people sitting there are watching an opera, as there are no opera performances scheduled for that venue!

[Barbirollians]

One thing which shouldn't go unremarked is Hans Werner Henze's adoration for the operas of Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, whose music he saw as an inspirational antidote to the "heavy" (his word) Germanic post-Wagnerian influence on his own country's tradition - which is to say Germany's, although Henze was by that time residing in Italy.

That's quite a controversial point of view, and undoubtedly a very personal one, given that Henze had escaped a climate, both pre-war and post-war, which was authoritarian and homophobic in the land of his birth, which would have sidelined for him how German composers of the First Weimar Republic era of the 1920s such as Weill, Eisler and Krenek had boldly sought to break the Wagnerian link, particularly in their Zeitopern. And I rather think he judged that authoritarianism as extending into the, for him, doctrinaire post-Webernian serialism dominating new German music in the early 1950s. Personally, for me it is fortunate that Henze's "adaptation" of the spirit of Rossini & co in such operas as Der Junge Lord and Elegie for Young Lovers succeeded in sublimating the idiomatic correlative to that spirit so well as to obscure effectively all stylistic references to it; and as you can tell I'm not a great advocate of Italian opera from Donizetti to Verdi, not even the "political" Verdi, though I love Puccini and especially the operatic tradition as re-realised by Malipiero and later Italian composers including Dallapiccola, Nono and Berio.

Interesting post SA - funnily enough I love Donizetti - few things cheer one up more than that ROH DVD with Dessay/Florez et al in La Fille du Regiment.

[aeolium]

The answer to the thread question from me is - absolutely not! One of the real musical pleasures I have had in the last decade is in exploring the operas of Rossini, including a number that are unlikely (outside Italy) ever to see a staged performance, at least in my lifetime. Although I recently went to a very enjoyable concert mainly of arias from Rossini's opera seria repertoire given by the ever-adventurous and excellent English Touring Opera and the conductor towards the end told the audience that ETO were planning to mount a production of Elisabetta, Regina d'Inghilterra for next season.

One of the qualities I admire in Rossini is how often he surprises, which might not be expected from a composer known as "Signor Crescendo". He was an opera composer of enormous versatility, encompassing comic opera, opera seria, operas of huge variation in length from one-act operas to the epic length of Semiramide and Guillaume Tell, initiating a new style of grand opera with nationalist themes. The orchestration is so often inventive and varied. In the "La Calunnia" aria from Il Barbiere di Siviglia, for instance, chattering violins and muttering violas are joined gradually by other instruments until the rumour erupts in a pandemonium of orchestral noise. The wind writing in some of his heroic opera seria, such as Armida is wonderful, with a taxing horn solo right at the start in the Act 1 Sinfonia. And there is delicacy, too, for instance in the Willow Song in Otello, which I much prefer to Verdi's better known one. The harp and individual wind instruments provide a beautiful accompaniment to the singer. And his operatic stage directions are also sometimes dramatically surprising, too: as in Moïse in Egitto where the chorus opens in complete darkness (recently very effectively portrayed by WNO where the gloom was such that the orchestral players must have had difficulty reading their scores).

Rossini suffers, particularly in his opera seria, because he does not often provide memorable melodies (imv) and the music lacks emotional depth. His musical idols were Mozart and Haydn, and as in Mozart's operas the music provides ambiguity about a character's feelings (e.g. Elvira's opening aria in Don Giovanni where a threat to tear out her ex-lover's heart is accompanied by music of formal grace) so this is the case often in Rossini. And rather than writing arresting melodies, Rossini more often uses a simple theme or motif and develops and embellishes it with virtuoso writing for the voice, and sometimes very demanding writing for the orchestra too. This means that his comic operas, especially Il Barbiere, have long proved more popular than the others, though I am very glad Rossini did not take Beethoven's advice and stick to writing comic operas.

Another quality Rossini has that is quite rare among C19 composers is wit and a kind of joie de vivre that sets him closer to Haydn than any of his contemporaries or successors. Yes, there is repetition, and like other more illustrious composers before and since, Rossini reused material but that's hardly surprising given the almost impossible deadlines he was given for some of his commissions. But overall, I think he is underappreciated outside Italy, and a revival of his lesser-known operas would be as welcome as the revival of Handel and Rameau operas was in the latter decades of the C20. That still doesn't look likely here - in the 150th anniversary of his death, there is not a single work of his being performed at the Proms, so people will still have to make their own discoveries.

[Nick Armstrong]

Can forumites explain what I am missing .

The singing - mercifully...

[Richard Barrett]

I've never seen or heard an entire Rossini opera and I don't expect to, unless someone has some wild horses at the ready. 19th century Italian opera is the "final frontier" for me, that and country&western, I've managed to find something of interest in almost every other genre. Like S_A I think I prefer my Italian opera filtered through Henze's sensibility (or maybe Tippett's in Midsummer Marriage) than the original. The closest I ever got was copying the parts of some unknown and unpublished Donizetti piece for Opera Rara. I would have to say that whatever might have been going on on stage or in the vocal department, the orchestral material was without exception stereotypical by-the-yard stuff.

[Serial_Apologist]

I've never seen or heard an entire Rossini opera and I don't expect to, unless someone has some wild horses at the ready. 19th century Italian opera is the "final frontier" for me, that and country&western, I've managed to find something of interest in almost every other genre. Like S_A I think I prefer my Italian opera filtered through Henze's sensibility (or maybe Tippett's in Midsummer Marriage) than the original. The closest I ever got was copying the parts of some unknown and unpublished Donizetti piece for Opera Rara. I would have to say that whatever might have been going on on stage or in the vocal department, the orchestral material was without exception stereotypical by-the-yard stuff.

Mike Westbrook did a take of his own on Rossini back in the 1980s, The Westbrook Rossiniana - part tribute, part gentle p*ss take - which went down well in Europe at festivals, and which is enjoyable for what it doesn't try to do - though, as with the Westbrook Beatles from around that same time, I doubt if many of my friends would agree!

[greenilex]

La Cenerentola is an excellent intro to opera for the littlies.

[aeolium]

I've never seen or heard an entire Rossini opera and I don't expect to, unless someone has some wild horses at the ready. 19th century Italian opera is the "final frontier" for me, that and country&western, I've managed to find something of interest in almost every other genre. Like S_A I think I prefer my Italian opera filtered through Henze's sensibility (or maybe Tippett's in Midsummer Marriage) than the original. The closest I ever got was copying the parts of some unknown and unpublished Donizetti piece for Opera Rara. I would have to say that whatever might have been going on on stage or in the vocal department, the orchestral material was without exception stereotypical by-the-yard stuff.

Though Donizetti, especially unknown and unpublished Donizetti, is not Rossini. As it happens, I don't particularly care for the genre of C19 Italian opera - or any genre qua genre, rather than particular composers or works. I don't listen to Donizetti, Bellini or Puccini, and only a few works of Verdi, but I do to Rossini who I think is different from those composers. But then I think you've said in the past you don't much like opera or much music from the C19 with the exception of a few composers. Fair enough, but it's hard to make a judgement on something if you don't listen to it, and if when you do listen to it you are prejudiced against it beforehand because it is part of a genre you dislike, then sure enough, you won't like it.

[Richard Barrett]

it's hard to make a judgement on something if you don't listen to it, and if when you do listen to it you are prejudiced against it beforehand because it is part of a genre you dislike, then sure enough, you won't like it.

But I'm always open to some mind-changing event... usually if someone asks me whether I like some music or other that I don't like, I try to remember to say "not yet"! I would hate to think that my musical tastes are fully formed and not open to expansion, however unlikely that may seem in connection to some particular kind of music or composer or whatever. But there are things I don't like because I hardly know them, and other things I don't like because I do know them!

[aeolium]

But there are things I don't like because I hardly know them, and other things I don't like because I do know them!

That's honest enough, if a bit harsh on the music you don't like because you hardly know it!

Anyway, The Barber of Seville must have some merit, if it was admired by both Beethoven and Berlioz - the latter grudgingly, since he hated the dominance of Italian opera in Parisian life.

[Pianoman]

I admit to quite enjoying Barber - but only in highlights form...in fact, most Rossini is best in that way imo

[LMcD]

I admit to quite enjoying Barber - but only in highlights form...in fact, most Rossini is best in that way imo

So...you like your Rossini operas trimmed.

[Serial_Apologist]

The late Stabat Mater of Rossini is a work I am quite partial to, having sung in it at school. I actually like it better than the Verdi Requiem, which I also *had* to sing in while at school!