Editing Gioachino Rossini (section)

==="The Code Rossini"===
{{Quote box|width=250px|bgcolor=#E0E6F8|align=right|quote="Tous les genres sont bons, hors le genre ennuyeux".{{refn|"All genres are good except the boring ones".|group= n}} |salign = left |source= Rossini, in a letter of 1868 (citing [[Voltaire]]){{sfn|Osborne|2007|p=vii}}}}The writer [[Julian Budden]], noting the formulas adopted early on by Rossini in his career and consistently followed by him thereafter as regards overtures, [[aria]]s, structures and ensembles, has called them "the Code Rossini" in a reference to the [[Code Napoléon]], the legal system established by the French Emperor.{{sfn|Budden|1973|p=12}} Rossini's overall style may indeed have been influenced more directly by the French: the historian [[John Rosselli (historian)|John Rosselli]] suggests that French rule in Italy at the start of the 19th century meant that "music had taken on new military qualities of attack, noise and speed – to be heard in Rossini."{{sfn|Rosselli|1991|p=22}} Rossini's approach to opera was inevitably tempered by changing tastes and audience demands. The formal "classicist" libretti of [[Metastasio]] which had underpinned late 18th century ''[[opera seria]]'' were replaced by subjects more to the taste of the age of [[Romanticism]], with stories demanding stronger characterisation and quicker action; a jobbing composer needed to meet these demands or fail.{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;2. First period 1810–1813}} Rossini's strategies met this reality. A formulaic approach was logistically indispensable for Rossini's career, at least at the start: in the seven years 1812–1819, he wrote 27 operas,{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=Works}} often at extremely short notice. For ''[[La Cenerentola]]'' (1817), for example, he had just over three weeks to write the music before the première.{{sfn|Osborne|2002b}}

Such pressures led to a further significant element of Rossini's compositional procedures, not included in Budden's "Code", namely, recycling. The composer often transferred a successful overture to subsequent operas: thus the overture to ''[[La pietra del paragone]]'' was later used for the ''opera seria'' ''[[Tancredi]]'' (1813), and (in the other direction) the overture to ''[[Aureliano in Palmira]]'' (1813) ended as (and is today known as) the overture to the comedy ''[[The Barber of Seville|Il barbiere di Siviglia]] (The Barber of Seville)''.{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;2. First period 1810–1813}}{{sfn|Osborne|2002c}} He also liberally re-employed arias and other sequences in later works. [[Spike Hughes]] notes that of the twenty-six numbers of ''[[Eduardo e Cristina]]'', produced in Venice in 1817, nineteen were lifted from previous works. "The audience&nbsp;... were remarkably good-humoured &nbsp;... and asked slyly why the libretto had been changed since the last performance".{{sfn|Hughes|1956|p=74}} Rossini expressed his disgust when the publisher [[Giovanni Ricordi]] issued a complete edition of his works in the 1850s: "The same pieces will be found several times, for I thought I had the right to remove from my fiascos those pieces which seemed best, to rescue them from shipwreck&nbsp;... A fiasco seemed to be good and dead, and now look they've resuscitated them all!"{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;3. From 'Tancredi' to 'La gazza ladra'}}

====Overtures====
[[Philip Gossett]] notes that Rossini "was from the outset a consummate composer of [[overture]]s". His basic formula for these remained constant throughout his career: Gossett characterises them as "[[sonata form|sonata]] movements without [[Development section|development]] sections, usually preceded by a slow introduction" with "clear melodies, exuberant rhythms [and] simple harmonic structure" and a ''[[crescendo]]'' climax.{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;2. First period 1810–1813}} [[Richard Taruskin]] also notes that the second theme is always announced in a woodwind solo, whose "catchiness" "etch[es] a distinct profile in the aural memory", and that the richness and inventiveness of his handling of the orchestra, even in these early works, marks the start of "[t]he great nineteenth-century flowering of [[orchestration]]."{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|pp=20–21}}

====Arias====
[[File:Palpiti.jpg|thumb|upright=1.8|alt=page of musical score|Extract from "Di tanti palpiti" (''Tancredi'')]]Rossini's handling of arias (and duets) in ''[[cavatina]]'' style marked a development from the eighteenth-century commonplace of [[recitative]] and aria. In the words of Rosselli, in Rossini's hands, "the aria became an engine for releasing emotion".{{sfn|Rosselli|1991|p=68}} Rossini's typical aria structure involved a lyrical introduction (''"cantabile"'') and a more intensive, brilliant, conclusion (''"cabaletta"''). This model could be adapted in various ways so as to forward the plot (as opposed to the typical eighteenth-century handling which resulted in the action coming to a halt as the requisite repeats of the ''[[da capo aria]]'' were undertaken). For example, they could be punctuated by comments from other characters (a convention known as ''"pertichini"''), or the chorus could intervene between the ''cantabile'' and the ''cabaletta'' so as to fire up the soloist. If such developments were not necessarily Rossini's own invention, he nevertheless made them his own by his expert handling of them.{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|pp=27–28}} A landmark in this context is the ''cavatina'' ''"Di tanti palpiti"'' from ''Tancredi'', which both Taruskin and Gossett (amongst others) single out as transformative, "the most famous aria Rossini ever wrote",{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|p=28}} with a "melody that seems to capture the melodic beauty and innocence characteristic of Italian opera."{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;3. From 'Tancredi' to 'La gazza ladra'}}{{refn|On its notoriety, Rossini wrote of himself self-mockingly in a letter of 1865 to his publisher Ricordi as "the author of the too-famous ''cavatina'' 'Di tanti palpiti.' " Another clue to its familiarity with 19th-century audiences is that [[Richard Wagner]] made fun of the aria with a deliberate quote from it in the Tailor's Chorus in ''[[Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg|Die Meistersinger]]'' (1868).{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|p=28}}|group=n}} Both writers point out the typical Rossinian touch of avoiding an "expected" cadence in the aria by a sudden shift from the home key of F to that of A flat (see example); Taruskin notes the implicit pun, as the words talk of returning, but the music moves in a new direction.{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|p=33}} The influence was lasting; Gossett notes how the Rossinian ''cabaletta'' style continued to inform Italian opera as late as [[Giuseppe Verdi]]'s ''[[Aida]]'' (1871).{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;3. From 'Tancredi' to 'La gazza ladra'}}

====Structure====
[[File:Tancredi Ferrara.jpg|thumb|upright|alt=text-only poster for operatic performance, listing cast|Poster for a performance of ''Tancredi'' in [[Ferrara]], 1813]]Such structural integration of the forms of vocal music with the dramatic development of the opera meant a sea-change from the Metastasian primacy of the aria; in Rossini's works, solo arias progressively take up a smaller proportion of the operas, in favour of duets (also typically in ''cantabile-cabaletta'' format) and ensembles.{{sfn|Gossett|2001|loc=§&nbsp;3. From 'Tancredi' to 'La gazza ladra'}}

During the late 18th century, creators of ''opera buffa'' had increasingly developed dramatic integration of the finales of each act. Finales began to "spread backwards", taking an ever larger proportion of the act, taking the structure of a musically continuous chain, accompanied throughout by orchestra, of a series of sections, each with its own characteristics of speed and style, mounting to a clamorous and vigorous final scene.{{sfn|Robinson|1980|p=560}} In his comic operas Rossini brought this technique to its peak and extended its range far beyond his predecessors. Of the finale to the first act of ''[[L'italiana in Algeri]]'', Taruskin writes that "[r]unning through almost a hundred pages of vocal score in record time, it is the most concentrated single dose of Rossini that there is."{{sfn|Taruskin|2010|p=25}}

Of greater consequence for the history of opera was Rossini's ability to progress this technique in the genre of ''opera seria''. Gossett in a very detailed analysis of the first-act finale of ''Tancredi'' identifies several elements in Rossini's practice. These include the contrast of "kinetic" action sequences, often characterised by orchestral motifs, with "static" expressions of emotion, the final "static" section in the form of a cabaletta, with all the characters joining in the final cadences. Gossett claims that it is "from the time of ''Tancredi'' that the cabaletta&nbsp;... becomes the obligatory closing section of each musical unit in the operas of Rossini and his contemporaries."{{sfn|Gossett|1971|p=328}}