Rossini Tancredi Overture

Gioacchino Rossini Tancredi Overture
October 17, 2021
First Christian Church, Colorado Springs, CO
Chamber Orchestra of the Springs
Thomas Wilson, Music Director
Audio and Video Engineer: Michael Lascuola

Gioachino Rossini (b. Feb 29, 1792 in Pesaro, Italy - d. Nov 13, 1868 in Passy, France)
Tancredi Overture (1813)
Few composers can claim the measure of prestige, popularity, and artistic influence that Gioachino Rossini achieved during his lifetime. His operas were the center of the Italian operatic scene in the early 19th century and his contemporaries recognized him as the most significant Italian composer of his time. Today, however, audiences mostly know Rossini through a handful of comic operas (largely dismissed as silly and sophomoric) and opera overtures, the most famous being commercialized by the mid-20th-century British television show William Tell.
Born to musical parents, Rossini grew up in theaters, which led him to study music at an early age, particularly voice and composition. By 1804 at the age of 12, Rossini appeared as a professional singer; and by 1809 he was the music director of the Accademia dei Concordi in Bologna. Rossini's first opera premiered in 1810 and his success on the operatic stage grew exponentially until his inexplicable retirement in 1830 at the age of 37.
Rossini recounts growing up in the shadow of Mozart who died less than three months before his birth. He wrote, “He (Mozart) was the wonder of my youth,” later followed by “the despair of my maturity, and he is the consolation of my old age.” He studied the music of Mozart and Haydn intensely, assimilating their advanced harmonic writing into his own. Rossini’s contemporaries included Beethoven, Schubert, Mendelssohn, and Berlioz; he lived to influence and witness the music of Wagner, Brahms, Bellini, and Verdi. Even Napoleon Bonaparte, who was just promoted to Captain when Rossini was born, influenced Rossini’s life, dashing his enthusiasm for Italian nationalism later in his life. Rossini certainly felt the weight of the Napoleonic Wars - his father Giuseppe was briefly imprisoned in 1800 for displeasing the papal authorities due to his boisterous pursuit of liberty.
Most opera lovers identify Rossini as a gifted composer of opera buffa (comic opera), a genre filled with light-hearted antics and memorable melodies. However, it was Tancredi, an opera seria (opera with a tragic storyline) written in 1813 that brought Rossini international success. Love and war are at the center of this tale, which is based on a 1760 play by Voltaire that tells of the doomed love of the soldier Tancredi toward the daughter of a powerful ruler. In Voltaire’s story set in 1005 AD, two factions - the Byzantines and the Saracens - were fighting for control in Sicily. Despite its separation in history from the early 19th century, the presence of the ongoing Napoleonic Wars made this tale resonate with Italian audiences.
Rossini nearly single-handedly transformed the operatic overture into independent works of art. Each is as suitable for the concert hall as they are to introduce the operas that follow. Rossini injected such energy and narrative into his overtures that critics coined the term “Rossini crescendo” to describe the exciting build-up that occurs in his overtures. The “Rossini crescendo” is actually several musical elements used together to create a natural crescendo (increase in volume) in the music through a combination of melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic devices. Through his craft, Rossini is able to create a slow-building intensity that often culminates in a musical fury that energizes the audience for the opening of the first act of the opera. The “Rossini crescendo” first appears in the overture to La Pietra del Paragone (1812), which is the same overture used to open Tancredi. Fairly typical for Rossini, he ran out of time to write a new overture for Tancredi and therefore reused an earlier one. This overture begins with a slow introduction (the beginning of the “Rossini crescendo”), which gives way to a frenzied development of exciting rhythm and quick motives, creating the upward rise of activity and volume that is the widening of the crescendo, bringing the overture to its energetic conclusion.

[OscarMartín-gg]

Desde que la escuché en el final de la deprimente, pesimista, melancólica, desvaída pero no por ello menos magnífica "Las hermanas Bronte" 1979 de Techine, ésta se ha convertido en mi obertura favorita.