Gioachino Rossini not only laid the foundations for the bel canto that would dominate the panorama of Italian opera in the early nineteenth century but was also the one who inaugurated the surprising behaviour adopted by the musicians of his time of getting hold of a mistress older than themselves (his loyal followers will be Franz Liszt, who fell in love with Marie d'Agoult, six years older; and then Chopin and Sand, who was seven years older than her "Chopinski"). Indeed, in 1815, when Chopin was only five years old, and Liszt was only rising above four, the precocious Gioachino, at twenty-three, would find love in the Madrid-born singer Isabella Colbran, seven years older.
Isabella, soprano and mezzo
A high-class soprano and mezzo, at the time of meeting Gioachino –whose comic operas have brought to fame only four years after his career began–, Mme Colbran was a singer whose tessitura and register were the polar opposites of the typical flourishes that, at that stage, the music of Gioachino exhibited. Therefore, she will urge the young composer to work in more serious operas, in order to perform heroines where her voice could display her full potential.
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| Isabella Colbran (1785 - 1845) |
The decline
But as time doesn't pass for nothing, by 1822 the voice of the Colbran had begun to decline. Rossini was forced to adapt the arias to her failing voice, until there was the last opera written for her: the drama in two acts, Semiramis. A year before its premiere they had been married, but the marriage would not be for life as their relationships will always be tangled and thorny. The rupture would come in 1837 when Isabella had spent many years without singing and Rossini turned eight composing absolutely nothing.
Semiramis
The two-act opera Semiramis took its script from Voltaire's tragedy, "Semiramis", based in turn on the legend of Semiramis, queen of Babylon. Premiered at the La Fenice theater, Venice, in February 1823, it is rarely performed today but is survived by its Overture, one of the most beautiful written by Rossini, and the most extensive of all.
The rendition is by the outstanding Venezuelan conductor Gustavo Dudamel with the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra, of which he has been the holder since 2009, and with which he won a Grammy Award in 2012 for the best orchestral performance, with the Symphony No. 4 by Johannes Brahms.
The familiar and overwhelming Rossini's crescendo rehearses a first song at minute 4:10. A second theme begins at 6:00, which will be resumed at 10:30 to lead to the climax and then to a thunderous finale.