Tancredi is a melodramma eroico (opera seria or heroic opera) in two acts by composer Gioachino Rossini and librettist Gaetano Rossi (who was also to write Semiramide ten years later), based on Voltaire's play Tancrède (1760). The opera made its first appearance at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice on 6 February 1813, less than a month after the premiere of his previous opera Il signor Bruschino. The overture, borrowed from La pietra del paragone, is a popular example of Rossini's characteristic style and is regularly performed in concert and recorded.
Considered by Stendhal, Rossini's earliest biographer, to be "high amongst the composer's masterworks", and describing it as "a genuine thunderbolt out of a clear, blue sky for the Italian lyric theatre,"Osborne, Charles 1994, p. 34 his librettist Gaetano Rossi notes that, with it, "Rossini rose to glory".Rossi, in Osborne, Richard 2007, p. 199 Richard Osborne proclaims it to be "his fully fledged opera seria and it established him, more or less instantly, as Italy's leading composer of contemporary opera."
Although the original version had a happy ending (as required by the opera seria tradition), soon after the Venice premiere, Rossini—who was more of a Neo-classicist than a Romantic, notes Servadio—had the poet Luigi Lechi rework the libretto to emulate the original tragic ending by Voltaire. In this new ending, presented at the Teatro Comunale in Ferrara on 21 March 1813, Tancredi wins the battle but is mortally wounded, and only then does he learn that Amenaide never betrayed him. Argirio marries the lovers in time for Tancredi to die in his wife's arms.
As has been stated by Philip Gossett and Patricia Brauner, it was the rediscovery of the score of this ending in 1974 (although elsewhere Gossett provides evidence that it was 1976)Gossett 2006, p. 149 that resulted in the version which is usually performed today.Gossett and Brauner 2001, in Holden, pp. 770–71
Composition history By the time he was twenty years old, Rossini's reputation had grown such that he was regarded as "'a maestro di cartello', a composer whose name alone guarantees a public".Osborne, Richard 2007, p. 21 Success with La pietra del paragone for Milan in September was great, but delays caused him to be late in Venice for his next commission at the Teatro San Moisè, L'occasione fa il ladro. Other comedies had preceded L'occasione, but its success ensured a fifth opera for that house. This was Il Signor Bruschino, which was presented on 27 January 1813 and which the composer wrote more-or-less parallel to preparing Tancredi, a commission for this opera having been accepted from Venice's most prestigious house, La Fenice, the previous autumn.
Other treatments of the Tancredi story had been prepared, the most recent being that of Stefano Pavesi in 1812. However, many of Rossini's formal inventions, seen in his earlier one-act operas, are here incorporated with great effect and formalism. As Gossett notes: "The opera established a new formal synthesis, new compositional models, with, through, and in spite of which Italian composers were to operate."
The revised ending for Ferrara, March, 1813
This revised version of the opera, presented a month after its Venice premiere, incorporates Voltaire's original ending.Osborne, Richard 1998, pp. 644–45 The music for this ending was withdrawn, it disappeared, and was not discovered until 1976.
Act 1: The duet L'aura che interno spiri / "The air you breathe brings mortal danger" from act 1 (the first encounter between the couple) was removed and replaced with Lasciami: non t'ascolto from act 2, something which Richard Osborne regards "as introducing a not entirely plausible note of confrontation into the lovers' first encounter".
Act 2 finale: Having come to find Tancredi, the knights of Syracuse enter along with Argirio and Amenaide. Angrily, Tancredi orders Amenaide to go to Solamir's camp, upset that she has come to disturb him. He leaves to go into battle, and shortly Argirio returns to report that the Syracusans have been victorious but that Tancredi has been severely wounded. He is carried in and learns from Argirio the truth about Amenaide just in time for Argirio to marry them. He then dies in her arms.Synopsis taken from Gossett and Brauner 2001, in Holden, pp. 771–72
According to Richard Osborne, the 1813 re-workings for Ferrara were not a success and "Rossini withdrew the revision and, as was his habit, redistributed some of the music in later work".Osborne, Charles 1994, p. 24 In Divas and Scholars, musicologist Philip Gossett recounts how this ending was rediscovered: Until the mid-1970s, no musical score was known to exist..[..]..The late Count Giacomo Lechi of Brecia ...[whose predecessor was the writer Luigi Lechi who had prepared the text for Ferrara]...was reviewing the family's papers in 1976, came across several musical manuscripts [one of which] bore the ..[..]..attestation [by Rossini]: "I declare (and not without shame) that this is an autograph of mine from 1813!!" (It was dated 22 November 1867).Gossett 2006, pp. 149–51
Following the discovery, the preparation of the critical edition for the Fondazione Rossini by Philip Gossett and others at the University of Chicago began in 1976.
December 1813 revision for Milan
In addition to restoring the happy ending, by the end of 1813 and in time for the Milan premiere in December at the new Teatro Ré, Rossini had also restored the cut second duet and had re-written and restored Argirio's cut aria. Other changes included Roggiero becoming a tenor with a new aria Torni d'amor la face, two different arias being composed for Argirio, and both duets for Tancredi and Amenaide being restored to their original locations.
While Tancredi and Amenaide are happily reunited, he is given "an entirely new rondo in lieu of the more elaborate gran scena of the original score after Tancredi learns from Argirio that her letter was written for him, and not for Solamir (rather than there being a denial from Solamir).
Performance history 19th century
Tancredi premiered in February 1813 at La Fenice in Venice with Adelaide Malanotte in the title role. The first two performances suffered because of vocal problems from its two female principals, but its success was assured over six performances into the following month.
It was quickly re-mounted in a revised version in Ferrara in March of that year which reverted to Voltaire's tragic ending, but audiences disliked it and subsequent performances there reverted to the Venice ending,Osborne, Charles 1994, p. 30 with a further revision appearing in Milan in December. Gossett established in 1971 that, later, Rossini also participated in other revisions for performances elsewhere in Italy, including those at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna in 1814 and the Naples premiere given at the Teatro del Fondo in 1816 and again in 1818.
However, Heather Hadlock notes that it was the Milanese version of December 1813 which became "something like a definitive form, and in this form it took Italy by storm". Other Italian houses presented the Venice version, including the Teatro Apollo in Rome (1814), the Teatro Regio di Torino (1814 and 1829), La Fenice again (1815, 1823 and 1833), and the Teatro San Moisè in Venice in March 1816 when, in another revision, it is the dying Solamir who professes Amenaide's innocence, and Tancredi returns home in triumph.
Philip Gossett's research in 1971 states that "until about 1825 the musical text was rather fluid. The first Ricordi edition (1829), which differs significantly from the later ones, corresponds to the Milanese version", but many other Italian cities saw the opera, including Florence (in 1814, 1816, and 1825), Padua (1814), Livorno (1815), Vicenza (1816), Macerata (1817), Camerino (1828), Viterbo (1828), Milan (1829), and Trieste (1830). Depending upon where it was performed, the opera was subject to textual alterations around explicit religious content, including Amenaide's prison prayer "Giusto Dio, che umile adoro", which was altered or suppressed in some productions.Izzo, Francesco. "Verdi, the Virgin, and the Censor: The Politics of the Cult of Mary in I Lombardi alla prima crociata and Giovanna d'Arco." Journal of the American Musicological Society 60, no. 3 (Fall 2007): 559.
Outside of Italy, it was given in Corfù (1822), Lisbon (as Tacredo) (1826), and Geneva and Buenos Aires (1828). The opera was first performed in England at the King's Theatre in London on 4 May 1820 with Fanny Corri-Paltoni as Amenaide. Its French premiere was given by the Théâtre-Lyrique Italien at the Salle Louvois in Paris on 23 April 1822 with Giuditta Pasta in the title role. It was seen in Portugal for the first time at the Teatro Nacional de São Carlos on 18 September 1822 (as Tancredo) and was given its La Scala premiere on 8 November 1823 with Brigida Lorenzani as Tancredi. Performances listed on librettodopera.it Retrieved 11 December 2012
The United States premiere occurred on 31 December 1825 at the Park Theatre in New York City using the revised Ferrara version by Lechi. The Paris Opéra mounted the work for the first time with Maria Malibran in the title role on 30 March 1829. After an 1833 revival at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Tancredi was not mounted again until almost 120 years later.
20th century and beyond
The Maggio Musicale Fiorentino revived the work on 17 May 1952 with Giulietta Simionato in the title role, Teresa Stich-Randall as Amenaide, Francesco Albanese as Argirio, Mario Petri as Orbazzano, and Tullio Serafin conducting. The opera was given at the Collegiate Theatre as part of the Camden Festival in April 1971 by the Basilica Opera.
With the discovery of the long-lost music for the March 1813 Ferrara revision and the resulting preparation and completion of the critical edition, the work was revived when mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne, who had expressed interest as early as 1972 in performing the Ferrara edition if it ever came to lightGossett 2006, p. 148 took on the title role at the Houston Grand Opera on 13 October 1977. Horne, who quickly became strongly associated with that role, insisted on the tragic Ferrara ending, citing that it is more consistent with the overall tone of the opera and that she "did not find the happy ending convincing". Indeed, most of the recordings of this opera today use the Ferrara conclusion, while some include the Venice finale as an extra track.
Horne's triumphant performances as Tancredi in Houston soon led to invitations from other opera houses to sing the role, and it is largely through her efforts that the opera enjoyed a surge of revivals during the latter half of the 20th century. She sang the part for performances at the Teatro dell'Opera di Roma (1977), the San Francisco Opera (1979), the Aix-en-Provence Festival (1981), La Fenice (1981, 1983), and the Lyric Opera of Chicago (1989) among others.
Contralto Ewa Podleś achieved recognition in the title role, performing it at the Vlaamse Opera (1991), La Scala (1993), the Berlin State Opera (1996), Polish National Opera at Warsaw (2000), the Canadian Opera Company (2005), the Caramoor International Music Festival (2006), the Teatro Real (2007), and Opera Boston (2009) among others. She also recorded the role in 1995. Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova has also been praised in the role, singing it at the Salzburg Festival (1992), with the Opera Orchestra of New York (1997), and on a 1996 recording with the Bavarian Radio Chorus and Munich Radio Orchestra.
Pier Luigi Pizzi staged a new production of Tancredi for the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro in 1982