Overture: L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers)

Like most of the overtures Rossini wrote before he abandoned Italy for a new career in Paris in 1824, the one he provided for L’Italiana in Algeri does not draw on material from the opera itself. They briefly had a tune in common, when Isabella’s “Pensa alla patria” became a victim of political censorship in Naples in 1815 and was replaced by an aria based on the second main theme of the overture, but that was just a matter of temporary expedience. Although one or two minor but more lasting revisions had been made in the meantime, the opera is presented in much the same form today as when it was first performed, with great success, in Venice in 1813.

While it avoids material from the opera, the overture brilliantly reflects both the comic orientation of the work and the spirited character of Isabella, the Italian girl who has come to Algiers to rescue her lover Lindoro from slavery in the palace of the Bey Mustafa. No defenceless innocent, she proves to be more than a match for Mustafa, whom she so effectively outwits that by the end of the opera she and Lindoro are on a ship back home to Italy.

Rossini’s first fully characteristic buffo overture set the pattern for many that would follow. It begins with a slow (Andante) introduction, featuring stealthily plucked strings and an elaborately expressive oboe which is later joined by a clarinet, just before a short pause and a change of tempo. The main (Allegro) section is constructed in the kind of sonata form the opera public of the day liked best: there is no developement. To compensate for that – after woodwind have introduced the lively main theme, the orchestra has intervened with a robust tutti and the oboe has delivered a brightly feminine second subject – there is a long and carefully calculated crescendo, which is something else the public liked. Another, even longer crescendo follows a slighly abbreviated recapitulation of the main themes and ends the work in triumph.