On Saturday afternoon, I went to the Met Opera to hear the new production of Rossini's final opera, Guillaume Tell after just having attended last month a forty-three year old production of one of the composer's earliest operas, L'italiana in Algeri.
Of course, the question is whether Rossini intended his opera as a valediction. Did he know when composing it that this would be his last work for the stage? This is highly unlikely as Tell was only the first of five operas he had contracted to compose for the Paris Opera. And there are, in fact, indications that he had considered writing an opera based on Goethe's Faust before abruptly retiring at the height of his fame at only age 37. So what happened then? Rossini himself never explained his sudden retirement at such a young age. It may have been simply that, as the world's most popular composer, he felt he had no more worlds to conquer and was wealthy enough that he no longer needed to contend with the tumultuous world of European opera. More likely though, I think, is that he reached a creative impasse. He could not return to opera buffa because he must have known better than anyone that he could never again write anything that would surpass the wild success of Il barbiere di Siviglia. On the other hand, while Tell was definitely a step in a new direction, Rossini might very well not have known where to go next with it and finally have seen it as a dead end.
The libretto, written by Étienne de Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, was based on Friedrich Schiller's eponymous play. I've always found it fascinating that with so many great German composers, the works of the greatest German poets, Goethe and Schiller, should have been put to music by composers from other countries. Witness Gounod's Faust and Massenet's Werther. It's even more perplexing that Rossini should have chosen to write an opera whose hero is a political rebel. Certainly, he must have known the problems he would encounter with censors if the work were ever to be staged in his native Italy. Did he think such a subject would endear him to a Parisian audience? This is highly unlikely since France, in the years following Napoleon's fall, had along with the rest of Europe in the Biedermeier period become as politically oppressive as Italy.
I had never before heard this opera and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. This was extremely powerful music that moved far beyond the limits of bel canto and pointed the way to the French grand opera style that would emerge later in the nineteenth century. In it one can also hear an anticipation of the dramatic sweep of Verdi's early works. If the action had been compressed into a tighter frame, the opera might have gained a more permanent place in the repertoire than it now enjoys. As it is, this is the first time it has been heard at the Met since 1931 (and for that matter, the very first time it has been sung there in the original French).
As for the performance itself, I thought conductor Fabio Luisi did very well, much better than when I heard him on the podium earlier this season leading Don Giovanni. As for the singers - Gerald Finley as Tell, Marina Rebeka as Mathilde, and Bryan Hymel as Arnold - they all were excellent; but the real star of the day was the superb Met chorus. This was a work that made full use of the chorus and these singers put everything they had into it.
Of the production by Pierre Audi, the less said the better as far as I'm concerned. This was one of those outings in which the Met, in its misguided search for relevance, has completely disregarded the dictates of good taste. The pillars of light in the second and third acts reminded me of nothing so much as Star Wars light sabers. Rossini deserves much better than this, especially after an eighty-five year wait.
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