Rossini, "Stabat Mater" - Finale

The last years of the master

When the opera William Tell premiered in Paris in August 1829, Gioacchino Rossini was the most famous composer in the world. He was 37 years old.
But that would be his last opera. After the premiere, he took his wife – the dramatic soprano Isabella Colbran – by the arm and went with her to Bologna for a well-deserved vacation. His next engagement with the Paris Opera was scheduled for 1831, so there was nothing to worry about. What no one imagined, not even he himself, was that he would not write another opera for the rest of his life. Rossini was retiring from the stage for good. For the next forty years, the maestro's most famous creations would be, in gastronomy, the turnedos Rossini, and in sacred music, the Stabat Mater.

Rossini's retirement, so early in his long life, is unparalleled in the history of music to this day. Long afterward, it was learned that even while working on William Tell he had considered abandoning his career as an opera composer. Before the premiere, he negotiated with the French government for an annual pension for life, in exchange for writing four operas for the Paris Opera. But after the events of 1830 that deposed Charles X, the potential agreement was definitively canceled. Rossini remained in Paris for a while, weighing the situation. His opera career was over. The maestro never spoke on the subject, but in 1860, eight years before his death, he said, "I decided I had something better to do: to remain silent."

Stabat Mater, the origins
In 1831, Rossini traveled to Spain. He stayed in Madrid for ten days during which he met Manuel Fernández Varela, a state official and great admirer of Rossini, who desired to have a manuscript of the maestro and a Stabat Mater to rival Pergolesi's very famous Stabat Mater. At first, the maestro did not like the idea at all, but finally agreed, on the condition that the manuscript would never be published or sold. Back in Paris, and lacking inspiration, Rossini gave much of the work to a friend, Giovanni Padolini, director of the Italian Theater in Paris. The premiere of the work, half Rossini, half Padolini, took place on Good Friday 1833 in a monastery in Madrid. But in 1837 Fernández Varela died and the work was sold to a publisher, and then published. Rossini panicked.

"Updating" the  work
The scandal would be enormous if it became known that the work did not belong entirely to him. After several vicissitudes, the maestro managed to recover the manuscript. He sat down to rewrite Padolini's work and added new sections, adding a great new finale.

The "updated" Stabat Mater was premiered to great acclaim in Paris on January 7, 1842, thirteen years after Rossini's last Parisian premiere. Three "numbers" had to be repeated and Rossini's name was chanted by an ecstatic crowd.
Maestro Rossini had earned his fame in the craft of popular spectacle, but he was also capable of creating music that was undeniably serious, profound, and transcendent.

Stabat Mater - Finale - "Amen in sempiterna saecula"
The work is a musicalization, a solemn setting to music of the 13th-century Catholic verses, collectively called Stabat Mater, attributed to Pope Innocent III, which describe the sorrow of the Virgin Mary in the presence of the crucified Jesus, and which begin with the words Stabat Mater dolorosa (the Mother was suffering). The verses had already been set to music by Palestrina and Pergolesi, among others, and would later be set to music by Liszt, Dvorak, and Verdi.

Written for choir, orchestra, and four voices, the piece consists of ten sections. The complete work lasts approximately one hour.
Presented here is the finale, Amen, in a performance by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Italian maestro Carlo Maria Giulini.