Rossini Rides Again

"Ah, Rossini," Beethoven said to his young Italian visitor in the spring of 1822, "you are the composer of The Bar ber of Seville. It delights me. It will be played as long as Italian opera exists." As usual, Beethoven was exactly right. Although Gioacchino Rossini dashed off 38 operas before his retirement at the age of 37, he was long known as essentially a one-opera composer. Many of his lively overtures are concert hall staples, but the musical dramas they introduce were generally considered too florid for modern ears and too demanding for contemporary voices.

Today, though, there is a growing interest in Rossini, and last week Milan's La Scala revived one of his most difficult operas: The Siege of Corinth. A papier-mache tragedy about the Turkish conquest of Greece in the 15th century, it was not well liked at its Naples premiere in 1820; the audience expected Rossini's usual opera buffa, not blood and fireworks. The work fared little better elsewhere in Italy. Audiences found it too moralistic; singers were terrorized by its complexities. In fact, it was last heard at La Scala more than a century ago. Yet despite the twin handicaps of obscurity and popular indifference, the revival was a major success.

Searching the Dustbins. In large part, the new Siege bore a made-in-U.S.A. stamp. American Conductor Thomas Schippers was on the podium, and his three principal singers were also American. Soprano Beverly Sills of the New York City Opera made a stunning La Scala debut as the Greek heroine Pamira. Mezzo-Soprano Marilyn Home displayed her rich vocal resources as the young Greek army officer Neocle (in the 19th century,female singers were often cast as young men). Puerto Rican-born Justino Diaz of the Met filled the basso role of the Turkish sultan with majesty and brilliance.

Invited by La Scala to conduct a Rossini work for the centenary of the composer's death, Schippers spent months scouring the operatic dustbins of Europe and the U.S. for a workable score of The Siege. He finally discovered a copy of the original Naples version among some old manuscripts in the Library of Congress. A French publisher lent him fragments of Rossini's orchestration for the first Paris performance. The Rossini library in Pesaro, Italy, the composer's home town, produced a score of the initial La Scala production. Schippers took what seemed to him the best music from each of these versions, including a breathtakingly difficult aria for Neocle which Rossini had never used apparently for lack of competent singers.

Barbaric Chords. The result of Schippers' assemblage is a remarkable triumph of sight and sound. Though the opening scenes are somewhat workaday Rossini, the opera comes into its full glory in the third act, which begins with an unusually long (14 minutes) aria by Home. Rossini's lyrical melodies shimmer and flow as beautifully as a moonlit Aegean. Then, before the curtain falls on the burning, ravaged Corinth, the orchestra sweeps through a series of harsh, barbaric chords that sound almost Wagnerian.

The revival, says La Scala's Co-Artistic Director Bindo Missiroli, has all "the nobility of an epic religious poem." Schippers himself regards The Siege of Corinth as "the most inventive opera Rossini ever wrote." Hard-to-please Milanese opera buffs are paying the ultimate compliment to the Michigan-born maestro: they say that it is really the work of a new composer named Rossini-Schippers.

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