Passionately endeavoured to compose hilarious works, Gioacchino Rossini had the misfortune to find love in a singer who sang serious operas, the mezzo Isabel Colbrand whom he married in 1822, after a long love affair. Colbrand, disqualified for the succession of frills in the style of Gioacchino, will give her very best for the composer to try a new path, this time oriented towards melancholy and expression of sentiments.
Fortunately, before he became serious he had been showing off his extravagant humor for a long time.
The first occasion came in 1813 with the farce Il Signor Bruschino, in which a character —a secondary one, sure enough— has to sing a single important sentence in the whole work: "Padre mio, son pentito, tito, tito, tito, tito". (My father, I am sorry). Previously, in the overture, the second violins are required by the score to tap their bows, rhythmically, 32 times, on their lecterns.
After the opera seria Tancredi (because there were some, prior to Colbrand) maestro Gioacchino composed L'italiana in Algeri, an opera with a "Muslim" subject in the style of The Abduction from the Seraglio, by Mozart. At the end of the first act, the singers must "sing" onomatopoeias as bum-bum, din-din, tac-tac and others in combination with a devilish rhythm of orchestra and chorus. An aria for bass demands the singer to imitate with trills and chirps the flourishes of a soprano.
"Questo è un nodo avviluppato" - Sextet
La Cenerentola (Cinderella), surely the most famous opera of Rossini after The Barber of Seville, presents the story of Perrault somewhat modified, in an adult version and with a prince of flesh and blood instead of the fairy, and with a somewhat cloying Cinderella for her unlimited righteousness.
Organized, as usual, in two acts, maestro Gioacchino does not forget absurd situations here. For Act II he wrote a sextet in which all the characters must sing, syllable by syllable, the phrases "Questo è un nodo avviluppato, questo è un grupo rintraciatto" (This is a complicated knot, this is a very close mess), at the moment when the comedy of entanglements is at its climax.
Organized, as usual, in two acts, maestro Gioacchino does not forget absurd situations here. For Act II he wrote a sextet in which all the characters must sing, syllable by syllable, the phrases "Questo è un nodo avviluppato, questo è un grupo rintraciatto" (This is a complicated knot, this is a very close mess), at the moment when the comedy of entanglements is at its climax.
Film version of 1981. Cenerentola: Frederica von Stade. Orchestra Teatro Alla Scala. Conductor: Claudio Abbado.
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