Hey everyone! Welcome to Day 31, the all-Rossini special!
But first I need to make a quick advertisement for the Spokane Symphony. My Spokane readers should already be getting ready for our concert tonight, which will include Osvaldo Golijov's brilliant The Last Round and an intensely pastoral Beethoven symphony. My readers who do not live in Spokane should spend two hours thinking intently about this music starting at 8:00 PM Pacific time. Please think hard.
Rossini: The Barber of Seville Overture - June 28th, 1945
This is a better recording by far than the one Toscanini recorded with the New York Philharmonic in 1929. The earlier performance sounds very tired, while this one is tense (in a good way) and forward-moving. At first blush I was actually a bit put off by the brisk motion of this reading, but then I realized how truly appropriate that is for Rossini.
The composer was renowned for his laziness, and was known to say that "there is no greater motivator than necessity." There is a possibly apocryphal story about Rossini apparently getting locked into a room by the producer of La gazza ladra when the composer did not have the overture written by the day before the first performance. Rossini apparently had no choice but to work non-stop until the overture was finished; upon finishing a page he would toss it out the window to the copyists waiting below.
When I thought back to this story I realized how right Rossini sounds when played a bit on the edge. It was, after all, written on the edge, and Toscanini obliges us with a perfectly authentic reading that is also a lot of fun to listen to.
Rossini: La Cenerentola Overture - June 28th, 1945
In 2004 a remarkable and tragically overlooked film called Closer was released. The movie had a fabulous classical soundtrack that consisted primarily of excerpts from Così fan tutte, but also used Rossini's Cenerentola Overture during a hilarious scene in which two men (played by Clive Owen and Jude Law) are chatting in an online forum of ill repute. Law's character is having a laugh this whole time by pretending to be a beautiful young woman, while Owen (playing a negligent dermatologist) eagerly buys into it. The 19th century equivalent of this scene could easily have taken place (in somewhat sanitized form) in a Rossini opera, and the Cenerentola overture is used perfectly during this "conversation", rising and falling with Law's online BS.
I don't recall which recording was used in the movie, but this Toscanini recording perfectly conveys all of the graceful humor of this wonderful music.
Rossini: La gazza ladra Overture - June 28th, 1945
I don't know whether or not the story is true that Rossini wrote this overture in one day in a locked room, but I can believe that it was written with some urgency. Sometimes haste is a good thing, and Toscanini beautifully plays up the fresh, impulsive nature of this overture.
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That's it for Day 31!
I didn't end up having time to go figure skating today, so I will have to do that tomorrow - it's destiny. There may even be time for trips to Hungary and the Grand Canyon.
Happy Saturday!
Rossini supposedly exhibited even greater laziness in providing Barbiere with its overture. What we now know as the Overture to the Barber of Seville was first composed for and premiered in 1813 as the Overture to his opera Elisabetta. Two years later, he used the very the same music for Aureliana in Palmira; the passage then made its "debut" in Barbiere the following year.
ReplyDeleteWhy do I know this?
As the Second Oboist at the MET, I have always been curious why Rossini scored the Barbiere Overture for two oboes, but the remainder of the opera only has a part for one oboe.
Although I long suspected it had been "copied and pasted" from another work, a little research confirmed my suspicions.
Sneaking out of the orchestra pit ten minutes into the performance, I always get ribbing from my colleagues when I am assigned this plum gig. I just smile and enjoy the fact that Rossini's recycled music gives me a very short night of work!
Knowing the above seems to give even more relevance to your correlation with Toscanini's "on edge" performance and the slap-dash way in which this opera was given an overture!
Just thought you might like to know!
I enjoy your reading your blog. I found out about it through a Tweet from KPBX (where I used to be an announcer. I was also Principal Oboe of the SSO from 1988-92.)
Susan Spector
That's very interesting about the instrumentation for Barber of Seville; I didn't know that the opera only uses one oboe once past the overture, but it certainly makes sense in the context of what we know about Rossini. I'm sure that if he were alive today he would endlessly abuse the cut-and-paste function on his notation software, just as he did with pen and paper in his own time.
ReplyDeleteAlthough the overture was originally used in two earlier operas, it still seems more appropriate to link it with The Barber of Seville, considering it's the only one of the three to have consistently remained in the repertoire. There is, however, an album of Rossini overtures conducted by Claudio Abbado that lists the famous tune we all know and love as being the overture to Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra. This recording was played on WFMT once while I was living in Chicago, and the announcer sounded very confused when he came back on: "Well, folks, the album cover said that was the overture to Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, but that sure sounded like the Barber of Seville Overture to me." Rossini can indeed be very confusing.
Thanks so much for your comment! It's quite an honor to have a musician from the MET reading my blog; my wife and I attend your broadcasts whenever we get the chance. I hope everything goes smoothly with the transition to your new Principal Conductor and that Maestro Levine's health will be restored.