This week, Donald Macleod presents five takes on the life and music of Gioachino Rossini. Today, the winning formula Rossini hit on right at the start of his operatic career.
Rossini had the good fortune to learn his craft not from a course of dry academic study but by toiling in the operatic trenches of Venice’s Teatro San Moisè, for which he produced a youthful string of one-act farces – four of which are sampled in today’s programme. Thrown in at the deep end at the tender age of 18, Rossini almost immediately – and apparently instinctively – caught on to the essentials of writing music for the stage. More than that, he seems to have codified his instincts into a structural ground plan that not only underpins his early farces, but continued to serve him when he graduated to writing comic operas on a larger scale – a case in point being the deftly-paced 1st-act finale of Cinderella, which concludes today’s programme.
La cambiale di matrimonio; overture
Orpheus Chamber Orchestra
La scala di seta; scene 1, Introduzione
Teresa Ringholz, soprano (Giulia)
Alessandro Corbelli, baritone (Germano)
Francesca Provvisionato, mezzo soprano (Lucilla)
English Chamber Orchestra
Marcello Viotti, conductor
L’inganno felice; scene 8 (extract): Terzetto: ‘Quel sembiante’
Raúl Giménez, tenor (Bertrando)
Pietro Spagnoli, bass (Tarabotto)
Annick Massis, soprano (Isabella)
Le Concert des Tuileries
Marc Minkowski, conductor
L’occasione fa il ladro (or Il cambio della valigia); scenes 12 (extract)–13:
– Duet: ‘Voi la sposa!’
– Recit: ‘Qui non c’è scampo’
– Aria: ‘Il mio padrone’
Enrico Fissore, bass (Don Parmenione)
Margherita Rinaldi, soprano (Berenice)
Antonio Pirino, tenor (Don Eusebio)
Gianni Socci, baritone (Martino)
Italian Radio Symphony Orchestra Turin
Vittorio Gui, conductor
La Cenerentola; Act 1, finale
Luigi Alva, tenor (Ramiro)
Renato Capecchi, baritone (Dandini)
Margherita Guglielmi, soprano (Clorinda)
Laura Zannini, soprano (Tisbe)
Ugo Trama, bass (Alidoro)
Teresa Berganza, mezzo soprano (Cenerentola)
Paolo Montarsolo, bass (Don Magnifico)
Scottish Opera Chorus
London Symphony Orchestra
Claudio Abbado, conductor
Produced by Chris Barstow for BBC Wales Show less