Overture to The Barber of Seville – Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Rossini, the earliest of the geniuses of the bel canto style of Italian opera, was born in Pesaro on February 29, 1792 and died in Paris on November 13, 1868. Although he composed many tragic operas as well as non-operatic works, he is still most honored for his brilliant comic operas, especially the immortal The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia) of 1816. The opera, with a libretto by Cesare Sterbini, is based upon Beaumarchais’s play of 1775. Its original title was Almaviva, o sia L’inutile precauzione. Rossini retained the subtitle, which translates as “The useless precaution.” It received its first performance on February 20, 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The popular Overture is scored for piccolo, flute, 2 oboes, 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, 2 horns, 2 trumpets, 3 trombones, timpani, percussion, and strings.
Rossini was an eminently practical fellow, as well as a skilled promoter. When the opera we now know as The Barber of Seville was given its premiere in 1816, Rossini knew that his setting of Beaumarchais’ farcical comedy was controversial, as it had the audacity to replace the popular opera of the same name by Giovanni Paisiello, composed in 1782, still a favorite of Italian audiences of the day. (It is interesting fact to note that Paisiello’s setting served as the model for the vocal ranges for the characters used by Mozart in composing his opera based on Beaumarchais’ sequel, The Marriage of Figaro.) Rossini tried to avoid any conflict by entitling the opera Almaviva, but the audiences at the premiere were not fooled, chanting the name “Pai-si-ell-o, Pai-si-ell-o!” after the performance by way of protest. By the time the opera was performed in Bologna in August of that same year, Paisiello had died, and Rossini now felt emboldened to change the title to The Barber of Seville. Rossini’s setting, of course, has withstood the test of time, leaving Paisiello’s version as an historical curiosity, despite its many fine qualities.
Rossini, who tended to be a rather lazy chap, recycled material from two of his earlier operas, Aureliano in Palmira (1813) and Elisabetta, regina d’Inghilterra (1815) to serve as the overture to The Barber of Seville. As a result, the overture contains none of the thematic material in the opera itself. This certainly has not detracted from the overture’s popularity. After a striking fanfare intended to grab the audience’s attention. The main body of the overture begins dramatically in the minor mode, but eventually yields to the bright cheerfulness for which Rossini is treasured by audiences, including wonderful virtuoso passages for the winds and horn, as well as the patented Rossini crescendo—a device that provides excitement and never fails to thrill audiences.
Even for those who may not know the opera, the overture has been used in films over the years, ranging from Stanley Kubrick’s sinister A Clockwork Orange (1971) to the delightfulBabe: Pig in the City (1998). The Beatles used it for the end credits of Help! (1965) and the great Italian director Federico Fellini borrowed it for a fantasy sequence in his surrealist masterpiece 8½ (1963).
Program note by David B. Levy, © 2020/2026
“É la solita storia” from L’Arlesiana – Francesco Cilea (1866-1950)
Italian master Cilea’s third opera, L’Arlesiana, based on Alphonse Daudet’s play,received its premiere in 1897 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. Georges Bizet’s incidental music to the same play is frequently performed by orchestras throughout the world. The celebrated tenor, Enrico Caruso, created the role of Federico, whose lament, È la solita storia del pastore, has become a favorite of tenors ever since. Federico is in love with a girl from Arles, despite the fact that his family has betrothed him to another woman. In Leopoldo’s libretto, he sings,
It’s the old tale of the shepherd…
The poor boy wanted to retell it
And he fell asleep.
There is oblivion in sleep.
How I envy him!
I too would like to sleep like that
To find oblivion at least in slumber!
I am searching only for peace.
I would like to be able to forget everything!
Program Note by David B. Levy, ©2026
“Ah! Non credea mirarti/Ah non giunge” from La Somnambula – Vincenzo Bellini (1801-1835)
Bellini’s 1831 opera, La Somnambula (The Sleepwalker), is a prime example of the Italian bel canto tradition. Many famous sopranos, starting with Giuditta Pasta and Maria Malibran, have been associated with the role of Amina. This demanding role calls for a host of virtuoso vocal techniques, including trills and florid runs and arabesques. Many plot twists are typical in bel canto operas. Amina is suspected to have been unfaithful to her betrothed, Elvino. As Amina sleepwalks dangerously across an unstable high bridge, watched by she sings this scena (recitative and aria), lamenting Elvino’s rejection and, holding a withered flower he had given to her, proves her enduring love for him. All is set right in the end.
“Recondita armonia” from Tosca – Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Puccini became heir to the great Italian operatic tradition passed down through the Bel Canto age through the towering achievements of Giuseppe Verdi. Tosca, based on a true story set in Rome in 1800 during a period of political turbulence, features the celebrated opera diva, Floria Tosca, the lover of the political refugee, Mario Cavaradossi, and the evil Baron Scarpia, the chief of police who lusts after Tosca. In Act One, Mario is painting a portrait of Mary Magdalene and sings his romanza comparing the beauty of Tosca to the painting. The libretto concludes with the lines “Art, in its mysterious way/blends the contrasting beauties together…/
But while I’m painting her,/My only thought is of you,/Tosca, it is of you!
“Margaret’s Lullaby” from Margaret Garner – Richard Danielpour
Danielpour’s opera, Margaret Garner, with a libretto by Toni Morrison is loosely based on a historical runaway slave of the same name. It was created as a co-commission of the Michigan Opera Theatre, the Cincinnati Opera, and the Opera Company of Philadelphia.Garner’s tragic story also formed the basis of Morrison’s 1987 novel, Beloved, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. The opera had its premiere in Detroit in May 2005 with Denyce Graves cast in the title role. It has enjoyed several stagings since that time. “Margaret’s Lullaby” comes in the first of the opera’s two acts. It creates for the audience a deep feeling of sympathyfor Margaret as she gently shows her love for her children.
“O patria mia” from Aida – Giuseppe Verdi (1813-1901)
Verdi’s grand opera, Aida, received its first performance on December 24, 1871 at the Khedival Opera House in Cairo. Its title character is the Ethiopian princess who has been captured by the Egyptians. Despite her captivity, she is the beloved of the Egyptian General, Radamès, much to the dismay of the jealous Amneris. This triangle is set in a political background. In the aria “O patria mia,” Aida reveals her torment created by her love of her country standing in conflict with her love for Radamès.
“Largo al factotum” from The Barber of Seville – Gioachino Rossini
The title character of Rossini’s most popular opera is Figaro, the clever town factotum, or jack-of-all-trades. We are introduced to him in Act One with this virtuoso entrance aria in which he brags about his manifold skills, while also complaining about how beset he is by all the simultaneous requests for his services. In the aria’s final flourish, he indulges in self-congratulatory accolades.
Symphony No. 1 (“Jeremiah”) – Leonard Bernstein
Leonard Bernstein was born in Lawrence, MA on August 25, 1918 and died in New York City on October 14, 1990. His career centered on musical composition and conducting, but he was also a gifted pianist. He preferred to call himself simply “musician.” Bernstein was, as his biography in the New Grove Dictionary puts it, “the most famous and successful native-born figure in the history of classical music in the USA”. His influence on a generation of musicians was immeasurable. Furthermore, his body of work successfully spanned and connected the sometimes disparate worlds of the concert music and musical theater. His legacy continues through his music, recordings, videos, and many books. Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 (“Jeremiah”) was composed in 1942 and was premiered on January 28, 1944, at the Syria Mosque in Pittsburghwith the composer conducting the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. The mezzo-soprano soloist was Jennie Tourel. In 1944 it received the New York Critics’ Circle Award as the best American composition. The work is scored for 2 flutes, piccolo, 2 oboes, English horn, E-flat clarinet(doubling bass clarinet), 2 clarinets, 2 bassoons, contrabassoon, 4 horns, 3 trumpets, 3 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, piano, mezzo-soprano, and strings.
As we approach the centennial of Leonard Bernstein’s birth, a re-evaluation of his work as a composer is underway. His legacy as a conductor and educator have long been assured, and his score for the musical, West Side Story, has long been recognized for the masterpiece of musical theater that it is. But his reputation as a composer of concert music has been less secure. Not that his musical gifts were ever in question, but the span of his creative life as a composer was beset my certain self-doubt, precipitated in part by the rise in academic circles of atonality and serialism—the legacy of Schoenberg and his disciples, as well as the advent of electronic music. Bernstein, while respecting the austerity and abstraction of modernist techniques, was too deeply wed to the legacy of both European and American composition rooted in long-standing traditions to make these an integral part of his compositional style.
His musical style, taking the long view, was always eclectic. The symphonies of Mahler and Shostakovich mixed freely with the Americanism of Charles Ives, Aaron Copland, George Gershwin, and others, spiced by the traditions of the music of the synagogue that formed the musical world in which Bernstein grew up. Bernstein’s awareness and sensitivity to current events, politics, informed his choices as a composer. Even more important to him was his ambivalent attitude toward religious faith, as witnessed by the titles of his three symphonies composed between 1942 and 1963: “Jeremiah,” “Age of Anxiety,” and “Kaddish.” The first and third of these bear specific reference to Bernstein and his crisis of faith in a world dominated by the tragedy of wars and human suffering. The ultimate expression of his, which Bernstein also believed this crisis of faith to be not only personal, but to be the fundamental issue facing the world. The concept of the loss and recovery of faith found its ultimate expression in his epic 1971 “Mass,” composed for the opening of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.
The premiere of Bernstein’s Symphony No. 1 took place in the Syria Mosque, a 3,700-seat auditorium built for the Shriners in 1911 (dedicated 1916) in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. Many concerts by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, as well as other cultural and political events, took place there until the building was taken down in 1991.
The “Jeremiah” Symphony is dedicated to the composer’s father, Samuel J. Bernstein. According to the composer’s own program notes:
In the summer of 1939 I made a sketch for a “Lamentation” for soprano and orchestra. This sketch lay forgotten for two years, until in the spring of 1942 I began a first movement of a symphony. I then realized that this new movement, and the scherzo that I planned to follow it, made logical concomitants with the “Lamentation.” This the symphony came into being, with the “Lamentation” greatly changed, and soprano supplanted by a mezzo-soprano. The work was finished on 31 December 1942 and is dedicated to my father.
The Symphony does not make use to any great extent of actual Hebrew thematic material. The first theme of the Scherzo is paraphrased from a traditional Hebrew chant, and the opening phrase of the vocal part in the “Lamentation is based on a liturgical cadence still sung today in commemoration of the destruction of Jerusalem by Babylon. Other resemblances to Hebrew liturgical music are a matter of emotional quality rather than of notes themselves.
As for programmatic meanings, the intention is again not one of literalness, but of emotional quality. Thus the first movement (“Prophecy”) aims only to parallel in feeling the intensity of the prophet’s pleas with his people; and the scherzo (“Profanation”) to give a general sense of the destruction and chaos brought on by the pagan corruption within the priesthood and the people. The third movement (“Lamentation”), being a setting of poetic text, is naturally a more literary conception. It is the cry of Jeremiah, as he mourns his beloved Jerusalm, ruined, pillaged, and dishonored after his desperate efforts to save it. The text is from the book of Lamentations. (From the Boosey & Hawkes published score, © 1992)
A translation of the Hebrew verses Bernstein set from the Book of Lamentations follows:
CHAPTER 1.1-3
How doth the city sit solitary,
That was full of people!
How is she become as a widow?
She that was great among the nations.
And princess among the provinces.
How is she become tributary!
She weepeth sore in the night,
And her tears are on her cheeks;
She hath none to comfort her
Among all her lovers;
All her friends have dealt treacherously with her,
They are become her enemies.
Judah is gone into exile because of affliction.
And because of great servitude;
she dwelleth among the nations,
she findeth no rest.
all her pursuers overtook her
Within the narrow passes.
CHAPTER 1.8
Jerusalem hath grievously sinned…
How doth the city sit solitary
…a widow.
CHAPTER 4.14-15
They wander as blind men in the streets,
they are polluted with blood,
so that men cannot
touch their garments.
Depart, ye unclean! they cried unto them,
Depart, depart! touch us not…
CHAPTER 5.20-21
Wherefore dost thou forget us forever,
and forsake us so long time?…
Turn thou us unto thee, o lord…
Program Note by David B. Levy, © 2017
