from Les Soirées musicales (1830-35):

La Serenata

La Promessa

La Danza

from Péchés de Vieillesse (1857-1868):

Les amants de Séville

Rossini had been writing songs, and the occasional duet, since the beginning of his career. But it wasn’t until he retired from the operatic scene - after the first performance of Guillaume Tell in Paris in 1829 - that, whenever he felt the inclination, he had the opportunity to lavish his attention on the small-scale vocal and instrumental pieces that, together with the Stabat Mater and the Petite Messe solennelle, continued to delight his adoring public until shortly before his death. As they had ample opportunity to observe in Les Soirées musicales, a collection of eight songs and four duets published in Paris in 1835, illness had not deprived him of his lyrical genius, his skill in writing for voices or his facility in setting Italian words, whether by an old master like Metastasio or a librettist of the day like Count Carlo Pepoli.

Pepoli’s La Serenata is slight and entirely conventional but it inspired a soprano and tenor duet which, though it too seems conventional enough at first, is not only irresistible in its sensuous interlacing of the two voices but also surprisingly bold in its harmonic departures towards the end. Of the two poets, it is Metastasio of course who is awarded the more dignified settings, as in the beautifully poised soprano aria La Promessa which opens the collection of Soirées musicales. Pepoli, on the other hand, has most of the fun, as in La Pastorella dell’Alpi for soprano and, most famous of all, the brilliant tenor tarantella La Danza.

Another precious attribute Rossini retained in spite of his advancing years and the loss of many of his friends and colleagues was his sense of humour. Shortly after the death of Meyerbeer the late composer’s nephew came to Rossini with a funeral march he had written in his uncle’s honour. “Wouldn’t it have been better,” Rossini asked as he looked through the score, “if you had died and your uncle had written the funeral march?” Rossini’s own Quelques mesures de chant funèbre: a mon pauvre ami Meyerbeer stands at the head of the third of his thirteen books of Péchés de Vieillesse. It is characteristic of this highly heterogeneous collection of “sins of old age,” which were written largely to entertain the guests at Rossini’s much-prized “Samedi soirs” in the Chaussée d’Antin, that the Meyerbeer tribute and Les amants de Séville sit next to each other in the same volume. Described as a tirana, which is a dance-song of Andalusian origin, it is a delightful example of Rossini’s satirical wit which, at its best, makes its point by going only just over the top.