A legacy with a ‘leap’ and a prayer: celebrating Rossini’s timeless appeal

Composer Gioachino Rossini was a leap year baby, born on Feb. 29, 1792, in Pesaro, Italy. Technically, he’ll mark his 56th birthday when the next leap year occurs in 2024. But since many so-called leaplings celebrate their birthdays on Feb. 28, it seems a fitting day to pay tribute to one of music’s most popular and influential figures.

Unlike many composers who struggled for recognition during their own lifetimes, Rossini was among the lucky few to reach great levels of acclaim from the public and critics alike during his career. His prolific opera output included more than 30 operas mostly written over a period of just 10 years  from 1812 to 1822. Among his works were The Barber of Seville, an enduring favorite in opera houses around the world to this day, and Semiramide, a star vehicle for his first wife, the soprano Isabella Colbran.

William Tell, the composer’s epic final opera about the legendary Swiss hero, was eagerly anticipated and much celebrated at the time of its Paris premiere in 1829. Riccardo Muti has regularly programmed the William Tell Overture throughout his career, including performances during his tenure as the CSO’s Zell Music Director at Symphony Ball 2017, with the CSO and musicians of the Civic Orchestra in a 2018 side-by-side turn at the Concert for Chicago in Millennium Park, in subscription concerts and domestic tour performances. Muti, who describes the famous overture as a “fanfare for freedom,” was interviewed about the work in 2017 in anticipation of the CSO’s West Coast tour. (Theodore Thomas — the CSO’s founder and first music director — led the first performance of it on a subscription concert with the Orchestra in October 1893.)

Muti relayed a story passed down to him from his teacher Antonino Votto about Rossini’s masterwork. When Votto himself was studying at the Naples conservatory, his composition teacher was said to have placed the massive score to William Tell in Votto’s hands, saying, “Read this book. In this book there is everything that you can learn about music.” Muti affirmed that “in fact there is everything — trio, quartetti, quintetto — all the forms of composition. You can find even the change of the weather: the storm, the lightning, everything.”

This incredible achievement could have spurred the successful composer on to greater operatic heights. Instead, he took an unexpected detour, settling into a comfortable life and a semi-retirement at the age of 37 in Paris. His love of haute cuisine even led to the development of signature recipes, such as tournedos Rossini, a steak dish served with foie gras, truffles and a wine sauce.

Fortunately, another musical chapter was yet to come when Rossini accepted a commission to write a new setting of the Stabat mater, the 13th-century Franciscan poem about the Virgin Mary grieving at the cross of Jesus. The result is one of classical music's great choral masterpieces, brimming with intensity and dramatic power and serving as the composer’s own grand finale.

The Chicago Symphony Orchestra’s performances of Rossini’s Stabat mater date to 1893 and include a 1994 concert with the Chicago Symphony Chorus at the Ravinia Festival. In 2018, in recognition of the 150th anniversary of Rossini’s death, Riccardo Muti assembled an international all-star roster of soloists (soprano Krassimira Stoyanova, mezzo-soprano Ekaterina Gubanova, tenor Dmitry Korchak and bass-baritone Eric Owens) to join the CSO and Chorus (prepared by Chorus Director Duain Wolfe) in performing the work in Orchestra Hall for the first time since 1972.

In an interview with the Chicago Tribune ahead of the 2018 performances of the notoriously challenging work, Muti noted, “First, you need intelligent singers. Then you need an orchestra that understands the deep seriousness of Rossini’s music and can play it with style and conviction. That depends on the conductor.”

Muti went on to speak about the work's Inflammatus, for soprano, chorus and orchestra, which evokes the Day of Judgment. “It is like a great operatic aria,” Muti said. “The orchestration is very simple, but that does not mean superficial. You have to find a way to make the music sound not like a bad opera but like the great piece of sacred music it is.”

His time-tested operas and his sacred vocal masterpiece stand as a testament to his enduring impact on listeners and musicians alike. As Rossini himself once declared, “The language of music is common to all generations and nations; it is understood by everybody, since it is understood with the heart."