Sunday Afternoon at the Opera - Rossini: La Pietra del Paragone

Sunday Afternoon at the Opera host Keith Brown writes:

The seventh opera of Gioacchino Rossini, La Pietra del Paragone ("The Touchstone," 1812), was his first truly great opera buffa. It catapulted the composer into international fame. In Italy the fact that it premiered at the nation's foremost opera house, La Scala in Milan, assured that Rossini would become the leading opera composer among all other rivals in the field. Rossini was only twenty years old at the time. He could have been drafted into the Napoleonic army, but it seems Napoleon's viceroy in in Italy specifically exempted the young musical genius from military service.

Although audiences all over Europe raved about this comic opera, it and so many other Rossini operas fell out of the repertoire for more than a century. La Scala revived it in 1959. There's a studio recording of it made in 1973 for the Vanguard label. The recording followed a staging at Lincoln Center in New York City, which was the first complete and authentic performance of "The Touchstone" since circa 1812. The Vanguard studio production works from Rossini's autograph score, with all the musical numbers in proper sequence. The singing cast features a young tenor Jose Carreras as Giocondo the poet. Newell Jenkins conducts the Clarion Concerts Orchestra and Chorus. I last broadcast the three Vanguard stereo LPs way back on Sunday, August 18,1985. I employ those same vintage vinyl discs again today.