Gioachino Rossini
Overture to La gazza ladra
Gioachino Rossini was an early and prolific composer. The son of working musicians (his father taught at the Accademia Filharmonica in Bologna, and his mother was a soprano), he knew that composition was his bread-and-butter, and he made the most of it. By the age of 20 he had already composed 28 works, including chamber and orchestral pieces, two masses, and eight operas. Five years later, La gazza ladra was his 22nd opera and his 61st composition.
But Rossini’s was not hack work. Indeed, he was single-handedly responsible for raising the artistic level of comedic opera (opera buffa) at a time when the form had become stale. He also forged a new path in the operatic form with his serious works, one soon followed by Giuseppi Verdi.
In 1817, Rossini stood at the crossroads between his comic and serious writing. La gazza ladra, or The Thieving Magpie, is one of the last of his “comic” works–and its tale is one that is more tragic than humorous. It was based on a true incident, well-known to Rossini’s audiences, in which a French servant girl was executed as a thief, only to be exonerated after her death when it was discovered a magpie had stolen the items she had been accused of taking. This event had led to a general European denouncement of the death penalty for crimes of theft. In the opera’s version of events, young Ninetta is accused of stealing a silver spoon, but due to circumstances cannot prove her innocence without exposing her father, an army deserter–a crime for which he, too, might get the gallows. In the nick of time, it is discovered that a pet magpie is the real culprit, but only after a dramatic scene in which Ninetta must choose whether to sacrifice her father’s or her own life. This emphasis on the essential tragic nature of comedy was a bit risky for Rossini. The French writer Henri Stendahl, who would later publish a biography of the composer, wrote at the time that “Rossini has done five operas that he always copies; La gazza ladra is an attempt to break out of the circle.” The gamble paid off and the opera was a success both at its opening that year in Milan and elsewhere in Europe.
The overture captures the elements of pomp, pathos, and humor in the opera. It opens dramatically with a pair of snare drum rolls–first loud, then softer–that immediately call to mind both images of the military and the sound of drums as a prisoner is led to the gallows. This is followed by a stately introductory march, then another drum roll segues into the overture proper, where the pace becomes spirited and at times anxious. The final theme, beginning with a triplet figure, is the best-known of the piece. Here Rossini employs a tech nique he used so often that musicians today still refer to it by his name: the long, slow-building “Rossini crescendo” that grows inexorably in volume and in tempo over many measures. After stating his final theme at a rather reserved pace and dynamic, Rossini employs his patented crescendo not once but twice, each time building to an ever more energetic climax.