Why you shold not miss the Cantatas

The musicologists of the Rossini Foundation will present the themes and curiosities of the performances in the upcoming edition of the festival. But experiencing them live is an entirely different matter: come to Pesaro in August!

As regular visitors to the Rossini Opera Festival are well aware, Gioachino Rossini is not only synonymous with opera. His catalogue of compositions includes works from all the other major genres of Western classical music, including non-operatic musical theatre, symphonies, marches for military bands, sacred pieces and smaller-scale vocal, instrumental and piano pieces.
For decades, the Fondazione Rossini has been dedicated to publishing a critical edition of this vast catalogue. From 1979, the year in which the first volume (La gazza ladra, edited by Alberto Zedda) was published, to 2024, the ‘Critical Edition of the Works of Gioachino Rossini’ has reached the halfway point with the publication of the forty-fourth volume, which is dedicated to cantatas for solo voice, choir, and orchestra. Three of Rossini’s works belong to this genre: Il pianto d’Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo, La morte di Didone and Il pianto delle Muse in morte di Lord Byron (a fourth, La gratitudine, is currently lost). These three cantatas will be performed for the first time in their new critical editions on the afternoon of 17 August at the Teatro Rossini. Marco Beghelli, Cecilia Nicolò and Eleonora Di Cintio edited the respective works.
Il pianto d’Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo and La morte di Didone date back to the early years of Rossini’s career (approximately 1808–1811): the former is the composer’s final work at the Liceo Filarmonico in Bologna, while the latter is a tribute to Ester Mombelli, daughter of Domenico, who commissioned Rossini’s first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. These two cantatas are well known to Rossini fans thanks to previous performances in Pesaro. However, on 17 August, they will be presented in new critical editions, prepared by analysing numerous sources (autograph and otherwise), which have made it possible to reconstruct an accurate musical text and a surprising compositional history. This history features characters such as Stanislao Mattei, Rossini’s strict counterpoint teacher, and his more indulgent father, Giuseppe, known as Vivazza.
Il pianto delle Muse in morte di Lord Byron (The Lament of the Muses on the Death of Lord Byron) will be performed for the first time in Pesaro. This short composition was written in late spring of 1824, following the sudden death of the English poet during the military campaign for Greek independence. Rossini, who was in England at the time, presented his new work, dedicated to the memory of Lord Byron, in London. He performed the solo part of Apollo himself; accompanied by the Muses, Apollo gives voice to the anguish of the poet’s untimely death. Thanks to a meticulous analysis of the autograph score, the upcoming performance in Pesaro will feature a carefully crafted musical text, particularly with regard to the vocal and instrumental ensembles. The three cantatas represent a broad spectrum of Rossini’s career, given the dazzling pace at which his style evolved.
On the day of the concert, at 12 noon, the editors of the three critical editions will discuss the history of the cantatas and reveal interesting details about their work. The audience at the Rossini Opera Festival will thus have the opportunity to experience once again the heart of the applied musical philology laboratory that has characterised the Festival’s interaction with the Rossini Foundation over the years, and which continues to do so today. This is an unmissable opportunity and another reason to visit Pesaro next August.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                       Andrea Malnati

Published in : 30 June 2025