Le siège de Corinthe

Le siège de Corinthe (English: The Siege of Corinth) is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini set to a French libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, which was based on the reworking of some of the music from the composer's 1820 opera for Naples, Maometto II, the libretto of which was written by Cesare della Valle.

Le siège de Corinthe
Opera by Gioachino Rossini
Set for Act 3 in the premiere
Translation	The Siege of Corinth
Librettist	Luigi Balocchi Alexandre Soumet
Language	French
Based on	Third Siege of Missolonghi
Premiere	9 October 1826 Salle Le Peletier, Paris

Le siège was Rossini's first French opera (known also in its Italian version as L'assedio di Corinto) and was first given at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826

Composition history

The opera commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of the town of Missolonghi in 1826 by Turkish troops during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). The same incident – condemned throughout Western Europe for its cruelty – also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo. The reference to Corinth is an example of allegory, although Sultan Mehmed II had indeed besieged the city in the 1450s. Lord Byron's 1816 poem The Siege of Corinth has little, if any, connection with the opera as to its content.

Revised version of Maometto II

The French version of this late Rossini opera was a partial rewrite of the composer's 1820 Italian opera, Maometto II, but with the same story and similar if differently named characters, in the setting of the Turks' 1470 conquest of the Venetian colony of Negroponte. That original version had premiered in Naples on 3 December 1820 – six years before the Missolonghi siege and massacre. The original Maometto was not well received, neither in Naples nor in Venice where Rossini tried out a somewhat revised version in 1823, this time with a happy ending using music from his own La donna del lago at the conclusion.

But in 1826, two years after settling in Paris, Rossini tried yet again, with yet another version (which included two ballets, as called for by French operatic tradition), transplanted it to the Peloponnese with the new title Le siège de Corinthe in a topical nod to the then-raging Greek war for independence from the Ottomans, and translated it into French. This time, Rossini succeeded, and the opera was performed in various countries over the next decade or so.

Performance history

The first performance, in French, was at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826. It was given as L'assedio di Corinto in Parma on 26 January 1828 and it reached Vienna in July 1831. In the United States, the first performance was given in French by the Italian Opera House in New York in February 1833[1] and in Italian in February 1835.[2] The opera became popular across Europe in its Italian translation by Calisto Bassi with a contralto in the tenor role of Neocle, but from the 1860s it disappeared entirely from the repertory and was no longer staged for roughly the next eighty years.[3] However, the opera's overture remained widely popular and never left the concert orchestra repertory. More recently the overture has been performed and recorded by several contemporary classical orchestras, including the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.

In 1949 Le siège de Corinthe was finally revived again in a production starring Renata Tebaldi in Florence. That production was repeated two years later in Rome. In 1969 La Scala revived it for the Rossini centennial with Beverly Sills, in her La Scala debut, as Pamira, Marilyn Horne as Neocle, and Thomas Schippers conducting. The opera used a performing edition by noted musicologist and bel canto expert Randolph Mickelson[4] that made use of insertion arias from the original Neapolitan and Venetian versions and even from other obscure Rossini operas (as Rossini himself commonly did). In 1975, the Metropolitan Opera used the La Scala version for its premiere of the opera. The Met production was conducted by Schippers again and starred Beverly Sills in her Met debut, now opposite Shirley Verrett, Justino Díaz and Harry Theyard.

Since 1975, the only production of the opera in the US has been the October 2006 stagings of the French version by the Baltimore Opera, in a mid-19th century re-translation back into Italian, with one aria interpolated from one of the predecessor "Maometto II" versions and one from Rossini's Ciro in Babilonia which featured Elizabeth Futral as Pamira and Vivica Genaux as Neocle.

Outside the US, the opera has been staged several times. It was produced in Florence in 1982 in Calisto Bassi's Italian version, starring Katia Ricciarelli and contralto Martine Dupuy, and under the direction of Pier Luigi Pizzi. In 1992 the same production was revived in Genoa starring Luciana Serra, but the original French version was chosen instead. The French version was also staged twice at the Rossini Opera Festival: in 2000 starring Michele Pertusi, Ruth Ann Swenson and Giuseppe Filianoti, and in 2017, following the new critical edition by Damien Colas, in a La Fura dels Baus production.

Roles

Role	Voice type	Premiere Cast, 9 October 1826 (Conductor: François Antoine Habeneck)
Cléomène, Governor of Corinth	tenor	Louis Nourrit
Pamira, his daughter	soprano	Laure Cinti-Damoreau
Néoclès, a young Greek officer	tenor	Adolphe Nourrit
Mahomet II	bass	Henri-Étienne Dérivis
Adraste	tenor	Bonel
Hiéros	bass	Alexandre-Aimé Prévost
Ismène	mezzo-soprano	Frémont
Omar	tenor	Ferdinand Prévôt

Synopsis

Décor for Act 1-Scene 1 of Le siège de Corinthe at the Paris Opéra

Place: Corinth

Time: 1459

Act 1

Vestibule of the senate palace at Corinth

Act 2

Maometto's tent

Act 3

The tombs of Corinth, illuminated by a multitude of fires

Recordings

Year	Cast: Cléomène, Pamira, Néoclès, Maometto	Conductor, Opera House and Orchestra	Label [5]
1969	Franco Bonisolli, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne, Justino Díaz	Thomas Schippers, Teatro alla Scala Orchestra and Chorus (Recording of a performance of the version prepared by Schippers and Randolph Mickelson at La Scala, 11 April [6])	Audio CD: Arkadia Cat: CD 573; Legato Classics Cat: LCD 135-2; Celestial Audio Cat: CA 034
1974	Harry Theyard, Beverly Sills, Shirley Verrett, Justino Díaz	Thomas Schippers, London Symphony Orchestra, Ambrosian Opera Chorus (Recorded in July and August 1974)	Audio CD: EMI Classics Cat: 64335
1975	Harry Theyard, Beverly Sills, Shirley Verrett, Justino Díaz	Thomas Schippers, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus (Recording of a performance at the MET given in Italian in a version prepared by Thomas Schippers for La Scala, under the title ‘’L'Assedio de Corinthe")	Audio CD: Bensar Cat: OL 41975
1992	Dano Raffanti, Luciana Serra, Maurizio Comencini, Marcello Lippi	Paolo Olmi, Orchestra and Chorus of the Teatro Carlo Felice, Genoa	Audio CD: Nuova Era Cat: 7140-7142 & Cat: NE 7372/3
2000	Stephen Mark Brown, Ruth Ann Swenson, Giuseppe Filianoti, Michele Pertusi	Maurizio Benini, Opéra National de Lyon Orchestra and the Prague Chamber Chorus (Recording of a performance in French at the Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 5 August)	Audio CD: House of Opera Cat: CD 597; Charles Handelman, Live Opera Cat: (unnumbered)
2010	Marc Sala, Majella Cullagh, Michael Spyres, Lorenzo Regazzo	Jean-Luc Tingaud, Virtuosi Brunensis and Camerata Bach Choir (Recording of performances at the Rossini in Wildbad Festival)	Audio CD: Naxos Cat: 8.660329-30

References

Notes

1. Almanacco Amadeus
2. Lahee, Henry C. "Annals of Music in America". Retrieved 19 February 2015.
3. Beghelli, Marco & Gallino, Nicola (ed.) (1991), Tutti i libretti di Rossini, Milan: Garzanti, p. 786. ISBN 88-11-41059-2
4. Biography of Mickelson on vocalimages.com. Retrieved 16 June 2014
5. Recordings of Le siège de Corinthe on operadis-opera-discography.org.uk
6. Complete Beverly Sills performance list

Sources

• Casaglia, Gherardo (2005)."Le siège de Corinthe". L'Almanacco di Gherardo Casaglia (in Italian).
• Gossett, Philip; Brauner, Patricia (2001), "Le siège de Corinthe" in Holden, Amanda (ed.), The New Penguin Opera Guide, New York: Penguin Putnam. ISBN 0-14-029312-4
• Osborne, Charles (1994), The Bel Canto Operas of Rossini, Donizetti, and Bellini, Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press. ISBN 0931340713
• Osborne, Richard, Rossini (1990), Ithaca, New York: Northeastern University Press. ISBN 1-55553-088-5
• Osborne, Richard (1998), "Le siège de Corinthe", in Stanley Sadie, (Ed.), The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, Vol. Four. pp. 364 – 65. London: Macmillan Publishers, Inc. ISBN 0-333-73432-7 ISBN 1-56159-228-5
• Toye, Francis (re-issue 1987), Rossini: The Man and His Music, Dover Publications, 1987. ISBN 0486253961 ISBN 0-486-25396-1,
• Warrack, John and West, Ewan (1992), The Oxford Dictionary of Opera, 782 pages, ISBN 0-19-869164-5

External links