Rossini - Overture to the Italian Girl in Algiers | Xian Zhang | New World Symphony (2019)

The 21-year-old Rossini already had ten operas under his belt when he composed L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers), and it took him only 18 days to craft the recycled libretto into a two-act dramma giocoso. It was this comic opera, along with the more serious work Tancredi composed a few months earlier, that elevated Rossini from a successful working musician in Venice to an international opera star.

The premise of L’Italiana in Algeri is that the sultan Mustafà, bored with the submissive wives in his harem, decides he must find a strong-willed Italian girl. He lucks out when a shipwreck delivers the beautiful Isabella to his shore, but in the end she proves to be more than he can handle. In the overture (or sinfonia in Italian parlance), the music follows the same sonata-allegro structure that Haydn perfected in his symphonies, including the optional slow introduction that was a Haydn staple. And clearly the young Rossini learned plenty about musical humor from jolly Papa Haydn, as heard in the shocking outburst that interrupts the introduction’s idyllic plucking! There is barely a trace of the opera’s North African setting in the overture (maybe just a whiff of exoticism in the woodwind solos and the spirited percussion), but audiences at this type of comic opera weren’t expecting verisimilitude; they were there to get swept up in Rossini’s wild crescendos, unforgettable tunes and infectious joy.

Originally performed December 14, 2019.

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