Following on from Puccini’s LA RONDINE and Johann Strauss’s DIE FLEDERMAUS, Rolando Villazón returns to the Deutsche Oper Berlin to tackle one of the great comedies of the bel canto genre and demonstrate that he can do humour. L’ITALIANA IN ALGERI remains one of the most popular works by Gioacchino Rossini, who is said to have dashed the piece off in less than a month and was a tender 21 years of age when the opera premiered at Venice’s Teatro San Benedetto in 1813. It’s a testament to Rossini’s boldness that he chose material that had been set to music only a few years before by his more experienced colleague Luigi Mosca. His audacity paid off, with the subsequent triumph bringing him immediate fame across Italy and widespread popularity soon afterwards throughout Europe.

Mustafa, the Bey of Algiers, has grown weary of his wife Elvira. This wry tale of his amorous extramarital aspirations and the schemes of the reunited lovers Lindora and Isabella to thwart him, coupled with the exotic setting, resonated strongly with audiences of the day. The rising fascination since the 18th century for non-European cultures was finding artistic expression and making inroads into the world of opera. That said, it is undoubtedly thanks to Rossini’s musical sophistication that L’ITALIANA continues to excite operagoers today and the maestro remains the undisputed king of opera buffa. Many of the solo numbers are straight out of the bel canto playbook – renditions such as Lindoro’s sweeping cavatina “Languir per una bella”, which pushes even the best tenor to the limit, and Isabella’s famous introductory aria “Cruda sorte” with its rich plunges and rousing coloraturas. So it was that Rossini found a style with L’ITALIANA which earns him the reverence of fans to this day.

Presented by radio 3 from rbb

read less