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La Cenerentola, ossia, La bonta in Trionfo: Dramma giocoso in due atti (review)

2001; Music Library Association; Volume: 57; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/not.2001.0085

1534-150X

Helen M. Greenwald,

Music Technology and Sound Studies

Stendhal complained that only a short way into the introduzione of Gioachino Rossini's La Cenerentola, he was "[afflicted] with a faint feeling of nausea," that the feeling "never entirely dissipated, [recurred] periodically throughout the opera, and with increasing violence" (Life of Rossini, trans. and annotated by Richard N. Coe, rev. ed. [London: Calder & Boyars, 1970], 244). He blamed his malaise on the absence of "idealism" in the music, a "banality" that failed to transport his imagination. It may be that such uneasiness about the opera was also provoked by its semiseria characteristics, a tendency to confuse the listener at times by the mix of light and dark, essential components of a genre that called for at least one basso buffo and a semitragic heroine. As much as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart balanced these elements with the utmost care in Don Giovanni, one could complain that in La Cenerentola Rossini carried them to extreme by making too stark juxtapositions rather than seamless transitions. Thus when Stendhal says the introduzione is problematic, it may well be that even the average listener may also react with surprise and some discomfort to Angelina's (La Cenerentola's) canzona, prophetic D-minor verses planted lament-like and sung in tuono flemmatico in the midst of a G-major Allegro con brio. [End Page 997]