Epiphany 5 - Wednesday - Falling In Love With William Tell

I have fallen in love with an opera that was written only 183 years ago! Seems strange doesn’t it? But I am currently teaching a class at Tri-C Community College on the last works of operatic composers. In my studies I have discovered a jewel – Guillaume Tell (William Tell) by Gioacchino Rossini.

If you were a fan of The Lone Ranger television series, you will know the opera William Tell for its overture formed the famous opening of that program. Listen again if you wish to the introduction.

But the overture, while stimulating, is only the entrée into a four-act masterpiece.

Gioacchino Rossini was 37 years old when Guillaume Tell was premiered, in 1829, at the Grand Opéra in Paris. It was his thirty-ninth and last opera, and he lived another 39 years without composing another. Why? Did Rossini know that Tell was his operatic swansong when he was writing it? Had writing thirty-nine operas in nineteen years finally caught up with him? Was the composer ill? Was Rossini burned out or exhausted? Had he simply lost the stomach for the grinding demand and intrigue of the European opera culture? Did Rossini rebel against the rising tide of Romanticism?

These queries have puzzled and perplexed Rossini scholars for generations. Unfortunately there seems to be few definitive answers to the questions offered above. What I want to do in this post is to focus the reader’s attention firmly on the one thing that truly matters - the opera itself and its music. The message is undeniable: Guillaume Tell, with its uneven plot, is Gioacchino Rossini's crowning musical achievement.

More often than not, when I think of Rossini’s operas, my mind shifts to such works as The Barber of Seville (1816), The Italian Girl in Algiers (1813), and La Cenerentola or Cinderella (1817). In other words, the brilliant comedies come to the fore that the composer wrote while he lived in Venice and Naples. Rossini confided to Richard Wagner at a dinner party in Paris later on in his life that he, Rossini, was more adept at writing opera buffa than opera seria. While these comedies are dazzling in their own right, I believe they pale in comparison to the composer’s venture into the more serious genre.

For me there is a defining moment in Guillaume Tell of such profound beauty that it transcends time itself. I am embarrassed to say that I stumbled upon it while going through my normal routine in preparing for class.

I had put the opera on the DVD player and was reading through my notes when the aria “Sombre forêt” began to play. I really had not noticed its importance up to that point. The music began to overwhelm me – the quiet drum rolls that preface each of the stanzas – the haunting melody – the maturity of the vocal line - the brilliant orchestration. The aria is simply magnificent.

I looked up from my notes and cued the piece again, and then again, and then again. I was hooked and mesmerized. Each time I listened to the aria, I began to hear other arias that would soon appear in the repertory of that time: Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor (1835), Meyerbeer’s Robert le Diable (1831), and a whole host of Verdi masterpieces. Rossini was setting the stage for what was to follow and he did so brilliantly. This great Italian master was as important to his era as Bach and Mozart had been to theirs.

My answer to why Rossini stopped writing operas is simply that when you have written a magnificent treasure such as “Sombre forêt” – there is truly nothing more to say.

Love One Another - Brian

The Lingering Effect of Opera

Maria Callas

“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I've left the opera house.”

Source: ThinkExist.com