Overture to La Cenerentola
Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)

[1817]

His father was a trumpeter and his mother sang professionally in comic opera—but even so, Gioachino Rossini’s rise to the center of the operatic world was astoundingly quick. At nine he was already playing viola in a pit orchestra, and by 12 he was both singing onstage and accompanying from the keyboard professionally. While in music school, he began occasionally writing substitute arias. It all led to his first commission, at 18, for an opera under his own name. He added another 38 operas over the next 19 years, transforming Italian opera in the process.

Rossini composed La Cenerentola (Cinderella) in 1817 for a theater in Rome, using a libretto based on the fairy tale Cendrillon, as it was known in the classic French telling by Charles Perrault. Given only three weeks to pull together the score, Rossini recycled the overture from La Gazzetta, an opera he had debuted a few months earlier in Naples. The majestic introduction builds suspense for a fast and lively overture filled with scampering runs and thrilling crescendos; it’s clear how curtain-raisers like this one propelled Rossini to the forefront of the opera..

Piccolo, two flutes, two oboes, two clarinets, bassoon, two horns, two trumpets, timpani, strings