Bel canto among the barricades: Rossini, his music, and history

Abstract

Rossini is often historicized by placing him in the context of the Restoration period (1815–1848). This article uses a historical methodology to examine that assumption in order to propose new insights into Rossini, his music, and his place in Italian history, culture, and opera. Rossini's experience shows how one of the great cultural icons of the Ottocento navigated the vicissitudes of one of Italy's most tumultuous centuries. The history is in dialogue with musicological research, especially by analyzing what listeners heard in his music. His music evoked strong binaries, the opposition of German and Italian music, which is sometimes identified with teleological history, here the tendency to manipulate the musical past for some more present purpose, for example, forcing Rossini into a nationalist narrative. Noting its dangers, this study expands the context in terms of time, by considering Rossini's entire career subject to historical categories, not only the Restoration but also the Risorgimento, the French Second Empire, and especially the often-overlooked Bologna period, and Rossini's relationship to politics. It also enlarges the sources consulted to include some of his minor works, for example his Messa di Gloria (1820), Cantata in onore del Sommo Pontefice Pio Nono (1847), and Hymn à Napoleon III (1867). Finally, the study also examines how Rossini developed his own historical consciousness amid his alienation from both the 19th-century and Italian opera in particular.