Rossini, Gioacchino

Gioachino Rossini

(b. Pesaro, 29 February 1792 – d.?Paris, 13 November 1868)

Ermione

Sinfonia

Preface
By 1816, the twenty-four-year-old Rossini was established as one of the leading operatic composers in northern Italy with such works as Tancredi, L’italiana in Algeri, and Il barbiere di Siviglia under his belt. Accomplishing these feats had not all been plain sailing, by any means, among the intrigues and jealousies of theaters in Milan and Venice and their fickle audiences. The composer was ready to venture forth. The opportunity came in 1815 with an invitation from Domenico Barbaja, the director of the royal theaters in Naples, a colorful, self-made, semi-literate entrepreneur, whose additional interests extended to gambling concessions, military supply, and real estate dealings. Always with an eye to exceptional talent, he was shrewd enough to see that he could lure the young composer with an extended contract and the flexibility to allow him to work elsewhere should the opportunities arise.

Rossini’s fame had not yet penetrated the fiercely insular operatic culture of Naples under its Bourbon monarch, Ferdinand IV, but the advantages of some of the finest available singers, a first-rate orchestra, and adequate preparation and rehearsal time offered the challenge to prove himself and win the audience over. He made an immediate hit with the public with Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra and a revival of L’italiana in Algeri. However, it was with Otello that the tone for the future was set by revealing a greater depth of dramatic situation and characterization than heretofore. In the third act, especially, he achieved a musical cohesiveness that he was to pursue in the seven succeeding opera serie he wrote for Naples.1

Rossini, a musical magpie par excellence, was never averse to borrowing from his own and others’ work as performance deadlines loomed. In the more favorable working conditions in Naples he was far less inclined to do so. Although he continued to cater to the expectations of his solo singers in arias, dramatic scenas, and cabalettas, (especially for Isobella Colbran, his leading soprano and Barbaja’s mistress–to become the first Signora Rossini in 1822) he developed a more integrated blueprint: a coherent dramatic and musical structure with a preponderance of concerted numbers and a more significant role for the chorus. This development is demonstrated in the next three works of his Neapolitan oeuvre: Armida, Mosè in Egitto, and Ricciardo e Zoraide.

Ermione is the first of the succeeding four works in which the musical and dramatic potential of the plots is thoroughly explored. The libretto by Andrea Tottola is closely based on Andromache (1667), the first successful play by French dramatist Jean Racine. Tottola was official poet to the royal theaters of Naples and his work for Ermione shows that he understood what was needed for a successful musical realization of the plot and was sympathetic to the composer’s desire to exploit the dramatic situation between characters. The main feature of his adaptation was to shift the focus from Andromache to Hermione, exploiting her passionate nature. The following brief plot summary gives an idea of the various intrigues and alliances resulting in a bloody murder and its aftermath…

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