Rossini and Post-Napoleonic Europe

255 Pages·2015·12.274 MB·English

by  Warren Roberts

Ro s s i n i
and Post-Napoleonic Europe
WARREN ROBERTS
Rossini and Post-Napoleonic Europe
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Eastman Studies in Music
Ralph P. Locke, Senior Editor
Eastman School of Music
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Rossini and
Post-Napoleonic Europe
Warren Roberts
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Copyright © 2015 by Warren Roberts
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation, no
part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the
prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2015
University of Rochester Press
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.urpress.com
and Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-58046-530-4
ISSN: 1071-9989
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Roberts, Warren, 1933– author.
Rossini and post-Napoleonic Europe / Warren Roberts.
pages cm — (Eastman studies in music, ISSN 1071-9989 ; v. 126)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-58046-530-4 (hardcover : alkaline paper) 1. Rossini, Gioacchino,
1792–1868. 2. Music—Political aspects—Europe—History—19th century. 3.
Europe—History—1789–1900. I. Title. II. Series: Eastman studies in music ; v. 126.
ML410.R8R63 2015
782.1092—d c23 2015018036
A catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
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Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Introduction 1
1 Setting the Stage: Opera Buffa and Comedy of Manners in an
Age of Democratic Revolution 6
2 Rossini, Mozart, Paisiello, and the Barber of Seville 33
3 Jane Austen, Goya, Rossini, and the Post-Napoleonic Age:
La Cenerentola 63
4 Rossini, Beethoven, and Rescue Opera: Fidelio and La gazza ladra 95
5 Rossini, Ferretti, Matilde di Shabran, and the Revolution of 1820–21 124
6 Stendhal and Rossini in Paris: Il viaggio a Reims, Le Comte Ory,
and the July Revolution 152
Conclusion: Thinking about Rossini 194
Notes 205
Bibliography 219
Index 229
Figures follow page 128.
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Acknowledgments
Having completed a draft of Rossini and Post-Napoleonic Europe, I felt that I
should show it to a musicologist. I am a historian and was aware from the
beginning that in writing about Rossini I was putting myself at risk; I needed
to see if what I had written might pass muster with Rossini experts. Of the
musicologists I had turned to most extensively as I worked my way through
my Rossini manuscript, Philip Gossett was the most prominent; his was the
response I most urgently wanted to have. The problem was that I have always
been reluctant to intrude on others; to contact a musicologist of Gossett’s
stature was an intimidating prospect. On the spur of the moment, I decided
to see if I could fi nd out if Gossett had an email address, so I went to Google
and put in his name. An entry on Gossett listed his email address, and I sent
him an email in which I described my Rossini project, with a few sentences
on each of my chapters. I explained that I am a historian, that I needed to
run my manuscript by a musicologist, and that I wondered if he might take
a look at it. To my astonishment, Gossett got back to me within ten minutes.
He explained that he was very busy and hardly in a position to take on some-
thing new, but he would like to see my Rossini manuscript anyway; he added
that he would look at it when he was able to fi nd time. He told me where to
send the manuscript and said he would get back to me after he had seen it.
Gossett took my manuscript to Rome, where he read it and sent me seven
pages of comments, corrections, and suggestions. Gossett was critical in the
best sense of the word, informing me where I was wrong and where he dis-
agreed with me but also indicating that what I said was worth saying.
Another musicologist has gone through my Rossini manuscript: Drew
Hartzell, a friend of many years. John Hynes, another friend, also read the man-
uscript; both made valuable suggestions. I am also in the debt of Rosamond
Hooper-Hamersley and Marc Lerner, historians with whom I have had helpful
exchanges on this manuscript.
As in all of my writing projects, Anne Roberts has been invaluable in her
ongoing support. She spoke to Victor De Renzi, conductor of the Sarasota
Opera, about my Rossini manuscript; he suggested that I send it to the
University of Rochester Press. I found the address of the music editor, Ralph
P. Locke, and sent him the manuscript. Since then, I have continued to work
on the manuscript and discuss revisions with Locke. The fact that he answered
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viii ❧ acknowledgments
every inquiry promptly and made very helpful suggestions has meant more to
me than words can say. I need hardly say that I am responsible for all errors,
small and large, in this book.
I thank Sonia Kane, editorial director of the University of Rochester Press,
for her support in taking my manuscript through the various stages that led to
its publication. Relations with Kane have been unusually cordial. In the course
of our email exchanges, something totally unexpected occurred; it turned out
that Sonia Kane had been an undergraduate student of mine at the University
of Albany before she went on to graduate study at the City University of New
York. It was a delightful twist that felt like a scene from a Rossini opera.
Everyone at the University of Rochester Press has been a pleasure to work
with. This includes Ralph Locke, Ryan Peterson, Julia Cook, Tracey Engel, and
Cheryl Carnahan, who were instrumental in turning the manuscript into a
book. They have shown professional standards of the highest order and have
been unfailingly pleasant in all our exchanges.
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Introduction
Rossini’s operas do not fit into any preconceived patterns; and this
is particularly true of the comic ones. Their most arresting features,
which may be called “Rossinian,” are not rooted in the past.
—Mark Elder, 1980
Rossini’s Barber of Seville reflects European intellectual life in the early
nineteenth century. . . . [This opera is] inconceivable outside the
intellectual atmosphere of post-Napoleonic Europe.
—Paul Robinson, 1985
These comments express different views of Rossini and his comic operas.
For Mark Elder, conductor of the English National Opera in 1980, Rossini’s
opere buffe are not “rooted in the past”; they are outside history, a point of view
that meshes well with opera productions that transpose settings in time and
place. A musical score is a text, with its particular patterns, markings, and
syntax; musicologists have worked assiduously to get Rossini’s scores right so
that performances of his operas are musically accurate, as close as possible
to what the composer intended.1 Yet today’s productions of Rossini’s operas
sometimes take many liberties, as in a production of Cenerentola I saw at the
Glimmerglass Opera in 2009, which was set in America at the time of the Great
Depression. This is the same opera Mark Elder conducted in a 1980 English
National Opera production and in connection with which he made the above
comments. Paul Robinson, a historian, takes a different approach. For him,
“Music is connected in numerous ways with the other intellectual and cultural
artifacts that make up our history.” Robinson believes Rossini’s best-known
comic opera, Barber of Seville, completely fi t its time; it breathed the intellectual
atmosphere of post-Napoleonic Europe. He goes so far as to say that the opera
is “inconceivable” outside the historical period in which it came into being.
Musicians, musicologists, and ordinary people who care about opera
respond to Rossini’s operas according to their various predilections. They
can enjoy them to the hilt regardless of when they were written and what
Rossini’s intentions might have been at the time of their composition, as a
friend did when she saw the Glimmerglass Cenerentola in 2009. At intermission
she commented on how wonderful the performance was and how much she
loved the opera. I agreed and added an observation that had occurred to me
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