Rossini: Elisabetta, Regina D'Inghilterra

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*** Résumé en anglais seulement *** Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra was premiered on 4 October 1815 at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples, the major opera venue of the time. This event was the 23 year-old Rossini’s triumphant debut there and established his all-conquering dominion over the Italian music scene. Rossini approached his task with a desire for total success in opera seria, the genre which earned a composer immortality, and completed the opera in three months – a luxury by his usual standards. Elisabetta presents two new elements, both in Rossini’s output and in 19th century opera as a whole. The first is that he wrote out in full the coloratura passages and the second is that he abolished “dry” recitatives in favour of orchestral versions. However, the first was not entirely new because even in his early Demetrio e Polibio, Rossini had treated vocal flourishes as an underlying structure for the music and not as mere decoration for a melody line as baroque composers did. The second was already standard practice in Neapolitan opere serie, which allowed no “dry” recitative. Thus apart from the new accompanied type, recitatives were simply an orchestral transcription of the chords played by the harpsichord and this was perhaps the oldest and most static part of the way the opera was put together. The truly new element in Elisabetta is its being an opera tailored for a primadonna, i.e. resting firmly upon the crucial presence of the leading lady, with a series of topoi that would be copied at least until the arrival of Nabucco.