Editing Gioachino Rossini (section)

====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}}