Music Director
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini (1792-1868)
Semiramide Overture
Gioacchino Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy on the Adriatic coast. He was the son of Giuseppe Rossini, a slaughterhouse inspector and horn player, and Anna Rossini, a baker's daughter who was an opera singer. By 1800, the family was deeply involved in Italy's theatrical life. Gioacchino Rossini eventually became one of Italy's most famous opera composers. Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). La Cenerentola, and Guillaume Tell (William Tell) are three of the most well-known of Rossini's thirty-nine operas.
Rossini moved to Bologna with his mother in 1796. That was when the Austrians returned to power, and Giuseppe Rossini was imprisoned for being sympathetic to Napoleon's Army.
In Bologna, Rossini first studied harpsichord with Giuseppe Prinetti. He then became apprentice to a blacksmith and studied music with Padre Angelo Tesei. He became a solo singer in church at the age of 10, and in 1805 appeared on stage singing in Ferdinando Paer's Camilla. The composer began cello study with Cavedagni at the Conservatoriuo of Bologna, and got into Padre Mattei's (1750-1825) counterpoint class. In 1810 Rossini composed his first comic opera, (opera buffa ), La cambiale in matrimonio (The Marriage Contract) . The cantata, Lo morte di Didone, and a two-act opera buffa. L'equivoca siravagante (The Extravagant Misunderstanding) appeared in 1911.
Rossini innovated Italian opera buffa by composing the floridly embellished melodies intrinsic to the bel canto style of singing. Two of Rossini's operas produced in Venice in 1813 made the composer famous. Tancredi, an opera seria. and L'italiana in Algeria an opera seria , were successful enough for Rossini to be hired as music director for two Neopolitan opera houses in 1814.
In Naples, Rossini began to write recitatives with string accompaniment. Otello and Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), were both composed for Naples. In 1822, Rossini married soprano Isabella Colbran, and in January 1823 composed Semiramide. The first performance of the opera about the evil Babylonian Queen Semiramis who murdered her husband, took place at Venice's La Fenice on February 3. 1823.
The Overture begins with a slow introduction based on the hymn-like chorus of praise for the Queen. Act I . The Allegro begins in D Major with a theme based on the orchestral introduction to the opera's final scene. The second theme, in A Major, is played by the clarinet, bassoon, and piccolo in a martial style. A long crescendo leads back to the repeat of the Allegro.
Notes by Beth Bergman Fisher