Rossini Opera Le Siège de Corinthe

Decor for Act 1 - Scene 1 of Rossini's La Siege de Corinthe

Rossini Opera Le Siège de Corinthe First Performed

Date Premiered:  October 9, 1826

Le siège de Corinthe (The Siege of Corinth) is Gioachino Rossini’s first French opera. Is is in three acts to a French libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, based on Maometto II by Cesare della Valle. It is also known in its Italian version as L’assedio di Corinto.

Opera History

Le Siège de Corinthe opera by Gioachino Rossini commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of Missolongi town in 1826 by the Turkish during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). The reference to Corinth is an example of allegory, although Sultan Mehmed II had indeed besieged the city in the 1450s.

This same incident also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo.

He tried earlier versions but was not successful.

In 1826, two years after settling in Paris, Rossini tried yet another version (including two ballets, as called for by French operatic tradition), transplanted it to Greece with the new title Le siège de Corinthe to the then-raging Greek war for independence from the Ottomans, and translated it into French.  Rossini succeeded this time, and the opera was performed in various countries over the next decade.

Notes of Performance History

The first performance, in French, was at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826. It was performed as L’assedio di Corinto in Parma on 26 January 1828, reaching Vienna in July 1831. The opera remained popular throughout the 1830s in Europe.

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 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 European debut, as Pamyra,  Marilyn Horne as Neocle.  Thomas Schippers conducted.

Since 1975, the only production of the opera in the US has been the October 2006 staging 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.”

The last performance was on October 22, 2006.

Outside the US the opera has been staged several times. It was produced in Florence in 1982 in Calisto Bassi’s Italian version.  The same production was given in Genoa, where the original French version was produced in 1992.

Sources:

• Recordings of Le siège de Corinthe on operadis-opera-discography.org.uk, Accessed October 8, 2011
• Amadeus Almanac, accessed October 8, 2011

Image Credit:

Décor for Act 1-Scene 1 of Le siège de Corinthe at the Paris Opéra, Wikimedia Commons, Accessed October 8, 2011.