Osborne Richard - Rossini

Gioachino Rossini was one of the most influential, as well as one of the most industrious and emotionally complex of the great nineteenth-century composers. Between 1810 and 1829, he wrote 39 operas, a body of work, comic and serious, which transformed Italian opera and radically altered the course of opera in France. His retirement from operatic composition in 1829, at the age of 37, was widely assumed to be the act of a talented but lazy man. In reality, politicalevents and a series of debilitating illnesses were the determining factors. After drafting the Stabat Mater in 1832, Rossini wrote no music of consequence for the best part of twenty-five years, before the clouds lifted and he began composing again in Paris in the late 1850s. During this gloriousIndian summer of his career, he wrote 150 songs and solo piano pieces his 'Sins of Old Age' and his final masterpiece, the Petite Messe solennelle. The image of Rossini as a gifted but feckless amateur-the witty, high-spirited bon vivant who dashed off The Barber of Seville in a mere thirteen days-persisted down the years, until the centenary of his death in 1968 inaugurated a process of re-evaluation by scholars, performers, and writers. The original 1985 edition ofRichard Osborne's pioneering and widely acclaimed Rossini redefined the life and provided detailed analyses of the complete Rossini oeuvre. Twenty years on, all Rossini's operas have been staged and recorded, a Critical Edition of his works is well advanced, and a scholarly edition of his correspondence, including 250previously unknown letters from Rossini to his parents, is in progress. Drawing on these past two decades of scholarship and performance, this new edition of Rossini provides the most detailed portrait we have yet had of one of the worlds best-loved and most enigmatic composers. Pages: 432 Languages: English Publisher: Oxford University Press Contents List of Illustrations Key to Sigla Preface to First Edition Preface to Second Edition 1. The formative years (1792-1810)2. Venice and Milan (1811-14)3. Arrival in Naples (1815)4. Rome and Il barbiere di Siviglia (1816)5. Naples, Rome and Milan (1816-17)6 Mosè in Egitto and Return to Pesaro (1818). 7. 1819-218. Vienna, Verona, Venice (1822-3)9. Paris and London (1823-4)10 Paris (1824-9)11. Retirement from operatic composition12. Bologna, Paris, Madrid (1829-34), Stabat mater, Olympe Pd'elissier, and Balzac13. Paris, the Rhineland, and return to Italy (1835-46)14. Times of Barricades and Assassinations, Bologna, Florence, and departure from Italy (1847-55)15. Return to Paris (1855)16. Saturday soirées and a New Mass17. Last Years (1865-8)18. Entr'acte: Some Problems of Approach to the Works19. The Early Operas (I): Farse for Venice's Teatro San Moisd`e20. Overtures21. The Early Operas (ii): Demetrio e Polibio, L'equivoco stravagante,Ciro in Babilonia, La Pieta del Paragone22. Tancredi: Heroic Comedy and the Forming of a Method23. L'italiana in Algeri: Formal Mastery in the Comic Style24. Milan and Venice (1813-14), Aureliano in Palmira, Il turco in Italia, Sigismondo25. Arrival in Naples (1815-16), Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, La gazzetta26. Il barbiere di Siviglia and the Transformation of a Tradition27. Otello and the Confrontation of Tragedy28. La Cenerentola: an Essay in Comic Pathos29. La Gazza Ladra and the Semiseria Style30. Armida and the New Romanticism31. Mosè in Egitto (1818-19) and Mo:ise et Pharaon (1827)32. A lost Masterpiece and a Forgotten Favorite: Ermione,and Ricciardo e Zoraide33. Rossini and Scott: La Donna del Lago34. Maometto II (1820) and Le Siège de Corinth (1826)35. Back from the Shadows: Matilde di Shabran and Zelmira36. Farewell to Italy: Semiramid37. Il viaggio a Reims (1825) and Le Comte Ory (1828)38. Guillaume Tell39. Sacred Music, Messa di Gloria, Stabat mater, Petite Messe Solennelle40. Vocal and Piano Music, Early Songs, Giovanna d'Arco, Les soirées Musicales, Péchés de VieillesseAppendices A: CalendarB: List of worksC: PersonaliaD: Select bibliographyIndex