Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868)
Overture to The Italian Girl in Algiers (1813)
Gioachino Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy, less than three months after Mozart died. He was a leap-year baby born on February 29th. While he lived 76 years, he only celebrated 19 birthdays. Known to the world as a brilliant and prolific opera composer, who enjoyed enormous success from the age of 18, he retired at 37!
Both of Rossini's parents were musical. Father played the trumpet professionally and though mother was not a trained singer, she had a good voice and enjoyed singing comic roles. Gioachino was their only child. He studied at the recently opened Liceo Musicale in Bologna for only two years as he felt that they had no more to teach him. Always very much his own person, he had had access to the library of a priest in Lugo, a small village near Ravenna, which contained many works by Haydn and Mozart, who were little known in Italy at that time. Both composers made a great impression on the boy. Later, he continued his studies in Bologna.
By the age of 18, Rossini was living in Venice where his first opera did well. Five years later, he was appointed theatre manager for two theatres in Naples including the famed San Carlo opera house. Early local antagonism was soon replaced by adulation as he racked up success after success. Today he would probably be serving a life sentence for sexual molestation of his leading ladies! He got away with appalling behavior because his operas were always playing to packed houses.
The overture we are to hear today was composed when Rossini was 21. He had just completed an opera called Tancredi which was playing in Milan, Ferrara and Venice and, before long, in Rome, Paris, London and New York. The Italian Girl in Algiers is a comic opera full of mistaken identities and highly improbable situations. In a nutshell, Isabella, the Italian girl, is shipwrecked and taken prisoner where the Bey has the hots for her. She tricks him and escapes.
Program notes by: Ian A. Fraser
