The Selling of Semiramide

With the first performance of Zelmira on 16 February 1822 at the Teatro San Carlo of Naples, Rossini concluded his Neapolitan sojourn, so important for the future development of Italian opera. Andrew Porter, in his articles and sensitive reviews of Rossini’s Neapolitan operas, was one of the first twentieth-century scholars to understand the significance of these works and the importance of Rossini serious operas more generally.² Zelmira, however, was not conceived for Naples, but for Vienna, where on 13 April it inaugurated the significant Italian season organized by the Neapolitan impresario, Domenico Barbaja, of which Rossini was the protagonist. While this was not Rossini’s first contact with a foreign theater, his Viennese experience reinforced the composer’s desire to affirm himself away from Italy.³ In Vienna, furthermore, he entered directly for the first time into the economic mechanisms that regulated the sale of operas to publishers.⁴ He also developed private contacts, such as with Prince Metternich, which would be decisive for his future.⁵ Directly from Metternich was to come Rossini’s designation as “official” composer for the Congress of the Holy Alliance in Verona during the Autumn of 1822.⁶ With these obligations in Verona, followed immediately by his contract with the Teatro La Fenice of Venice, Rossini returned to the region where he had begun his career. No one could have known, though, that for the Venetian Carnival season of 1823 he was to write his last opera for an Italian theater.

Although Radiciotti claimed, without citing his source, that Rossini’s contract of 13 August 1822 provided for Rossini the sum of 5,000 francs,⁸ Paolo Pinamonti located the account books for this season in the theater archives, and was thus able to report:

In return for this significant payment to the composer and his wife, however, the theater received full ownership of both the opera and its autograph manuscript (according to contemporary practice, autographs—unless specified differently—returned to their composer after a year). This clause would have decisive importance for the diffusion of the opera.

On 3 February Semiramide was performed for the first time. The opera remained on the boards through 10 March, the end of the season, for a total of twenty-eight consecutive performances.¹⁰ For further information about this first season, see my introduction to the critical edition of Semiramide.¹¹

Rossini’s contractual decision to assign proprietary rights for Semiramide to the Teatro La Fenice meant that the theater now found itself the owner of an important new opera.¹² They could sell all the rights to a third party, or they could sell some rights (such as printing vocal scores), while keeping others for themselves (such as renting performing materials to theaters). But the President apparently took no action until after receiving a letter from the publisher Artaria of Vienna, dated 4 March 1823, who sought to purchase a copy of the score. Since Rossini himself at the beginning of 1822 had sold Artaria the rights to several earlier operas, the publisher may have learned directly from the composer that for Semiramide he would have to negotiate directly with the theater. His letter reads as follows [II: 137]:

The theater soon learned, however, that it was one thing to own proprietary rights to an opera, quite another to enforce them.

Already on 8 March copies of the Sinfonia (presumably manuscript copies, perhaps reduced for piano solo) were being sold “in the music shop situated in Frezzeria,” as we learn from a complaint sent by the theater to the “General Direction of the Police of the Venetian Provinces.” [II: 138-9]. Fearful that their proprietary rights might soon be rendered worthless, the theater on 12 March responded to Artaria [II: 140]:

It seems likely that this offer was made in part because the theater suspected Rossini’s score would soon be circulating freely.

By the end of the month an agreement was reached. Rather than have Semiramide copied in Venice, the theater was to send Rossini’s original to Vienna, so that Artaria could make a copy itself, at the theater’s expense, “for which work he Artaria will be accorded about two and a half months, after which the original score will be returned.” [II: 144-5].¹³ The score was sent to Vienna on 29 March, where it was received no later than 16 April. In a postscript to their letter of receipt, the company offered to assume the cost of copying if they could send the Teatro La Fenice the copy and keep Rossini’s original [II: 152-3]. We have no written response from the theater to this ‘innocent’ suggestion, but by early July Artaria had finished his work and Rossini’s original was duly returned to Venice, where it was received on 18 July [II: 169n]. Artaria’s complete vocal score (without accompanied recitatives) was issued later that same year, but already by May extracts from the edition had begun to make their way to Milan.¹⁴

They were not the only printed extracts from Semiramide that were beginning to be made available to an eager public. Despite the efforts of the Teatro La Fenice to keep the opera from other eyes, the Milanese publisher, Giovanni Ricordi, had gained access to materials associated with the opera and had begun to issue the most sought-after compositions in reductions for piano and voice. When Ricordi advertised these publications in the Gazzetta di Milano on 10 and 11 April 1823,¹⁵ and shortly thereafter in the Gazzetta Privilegiata di Venezia, the theater complained. An “Avviso” was prepared on 15 April (and published in the Gazzetta Privilegiata, then reprinted on 3 and 8 May in the Gazzetta di Milano), of which a draft exists in the theater archive [II: 150-1]:¹⁶

Artaria soon began to complain to La Fenice that the score was circulating illegally. In a letter of 16 April, the firm protested that the Viennese publisher Sauer & Leidesdorf had begun to advertise extracts from Semiramide and that “not only the pieces announced by Sauer & Leidesdorf, but also several other from Semiramide are circulating among the public here” [II: 152-3].¹⁷ When Artaria became aware of Ricordi’s advertisement of 10 and 11 April in the Gazzetta di Milano (specifically the Sinfonia and the Duetto for Arsace and Assur, “Bella imago degli Dei”), he became more aggressive, writing to the President of the theater on 19 April [II: 157-8]:

Not only does there not seem to have been any sequestration or damages, but despite an impressive number of protests and denunciations, Ricordi calmly continued to sell his scores.

The Milanese publisher justified himself in a letter of 14 July to Giuseppe Maria Franchetti, head of the "Delegazione Provinciale" in charge of the theaters in Milan [II: 171-5],¹⁸ insisting that copyright legislation in force in Milan protected only full orchestral scores of an opera; reductions for piano, for piano and voice, or for any other group of instruments were to be considered new works and could circulate freely. The argument is framed in the following terms:

He further points out that Artaria continues to publish extracts from operas that belong to Ricordi. What is more, the Milanese extracts of Semiramide were published before the first extracts issued by Artaria. And, finally, according to Ricordi, these reductions constituted new compositions; legal protection accorded the original score, therefore, had no relevance. The protection of authors’ rights through international copyright legislation was still in its infancy in 1823.

It is indeed noteworthy that, in justifying the actions of the theater to Artaria, who had complained about the publication of extracts from Semiramide (as we have seen above), the President of the Teatro La Fenice made much the same argument to Artaria that Ricordi was later to make to the Provincial Delegation in Milan [II: 163-5]:

Since this President took every care to guard jealously both the score and the parts copied for the orchestra and singers, he has every reason to believe that the published pieces were obtained from the memory of some intelligent music lover, who has the strong inclination to throw together the first, most applauded pieces of music.

There was a bit of Schadenfreude in all of this, for Ricordi had protested Artaria’s publications of vocal scores for operas by Rossini that were unquestionably the property of the Milanese firm, that is, operas whose first performances had been given at the Teatro alla Scala.

The following table lists the extracts from Semiramide that Ricordi published in 1823:

We do not know how Ricordi got access to this material. A copyist might have provided him with musical manuscripts surreptitiously; a singer might have shared with Ricordi’s agents a vocal part; a musician with a prodigious memory might indeed have been sent to the opera house during the course of the run (as Ricordi suggested) to write down what he heard. More likely, Ricordi’s sources fell into more than one of these categories. The one thing of which we can be absolutely certain is that Ricordi did not have available a proper copy of Rossini’s entire full score. With the exception of the Sinfonia and the Coro di Donne e Cavatina Semiramide (N. 5), both of which are essentially correct renderings of the orchestral and vocal parts of Rossini’s original, and for which Ricordi might indeed have had available an accurate full score, all the pieces Ricordi published in this first group of printed extracts contain major differences from the opera Rossini wrote, as transmitted in every autograph and manuscript source,²⁰ as well as in the Artaria edition of the vocal score.

When I say that Ricordi’s first editions of the Sinfonia and the Coro di Donne e Cavatina Semiramide are correct renderings, I do not mean to suggest that they are without errors or emendations. Ricordi normally worked with a musical source and a printed libretto, for example, and would seek wherever possible to provide an accurate account also of the latter. The second quatrain of the cabaletta, for example, reads as follows in the original Venetian libretto:

Throughout this section, Rossini substituted “gioia” for “pace” in the last verse (shades of Don Alonso in Il barbiere di Siviglia!). He did so because he wanted the explosive consonant and vowel combination at the beginning of the word and the fine vowel configuration in the middle, both of which would serve him well during Semiramide’s elaborate coloratura passages. For the most part, Ricordi, sensitive to the problem, follows the composer, but on the very first appearance of the word the printed edition respectfully nods to the libretto, and restores its reading: ²¹

That the printed edition provides very little articulation and punctuation has nothing to do with Ricordi’s source: even when the firm was working from the very best sources, it rarely paid much attention to such matters during the 1820s.

Nonetheless, throughout these two numbers, the Ricordi edition accurately reflects the contents of the orchestral score, including melodic details, harmonic shifts (even subtle ones), and rhythmic structure. It follows the very complicated coloratura flourishes of the heroine, and the precise harmonies and rhythms of the choral interventions. Small lapses are the kind that might befall any hurried copyist not highly attuned to Rossini’s notation. Thus, in the following measure from the florid four-measure cadence of the cabaletta, which Rossini writes out twice, his dotted rhythm at the beginning of the fourth beat failed to engage Ricordi’s eye sufficiently. There is an augmenting dot after the a'' (sixteenth-note) on both appearances of the figuration in the printed edition, but no following thirty-second note:

But these are minor lapses, nothing that would cause us to question the nature of Ricordi’s sources.

In his polemical letter to Franchetti of 14 July 1823 Ricordi suggested that some of these pieces may have been heard in the theater repeatedly by excellent musicians with fine memories, who subsequently wrote them down. That some of the Ricordi extracts may derive (at least in part) from just such a practice seems clear. In the Duetto Arsace, e Assur (N. 3), for example, the vocal lines are basically accurate (pitches, rhythms, word placement, ornamentation, etc.), but the accompaniment is either approximate or wrong, suggesting that Ricordi’s only written source must have been carefully-copied singers’ parts prepared from Rossini’s manuscript, parts which would normally have surrounded the vocal lines with nothing but a bass line and an occasional instrumental flourish, omitting even the instrumental introductions and conclusions. Here is Ricordi’s rendering of the orchestral introduction to Arsace’s solo in the primo tempo of the Duetto (a similar passage introduces Assur’s repetition of the opening period):

This is not merely a faulty rendition of the original: it cannot have been based on a written score. Nor is it the only ‘overheard’ passage in the Duetto. The instrumental close to the composition, eleven measures in Rossini’s score, is reduced to four measures in the earliest Ricordi print, measures which have little to do with the original. Since final orchestral cadences were frequently modified in contemporary printed editions, usually to save space, we need to be cautious about conclusions drawn from this change, but no printed edition ever willingly modifies the opening of a piece. We are here faced with oral transmission, not copying.

The problems with the accompaniment, though, do not stop here. Underneath the carefully rendered vocal lines are the most banal or incorrect accompaniments. The opening period for Arsace is accompanied by strings, with a characteristic triplet configuration in the first violins; in the Ricordi print it is given as regular sixteenth notes:

The cabaletta theme is accompanied by a pervasive rhythmic figure played by bassoons and horns, with accompanying string chords on the first beat or the first and third beats. In the Ricordi edition the accompaniment becomes an undifferentiated series of dotted patterns:

The harmonization of the melody is often faulty, and sometimes unrecognizable. In the following phrase from Arsace’s opening period, notice how the chord on the second beat of the second measure, a diminished-seventh harmony in Rossini, becomes a subdominant chord in Ricordi. The chordal accompaniment imposed on the fourth measure is particularly excruciating: Rossini’s tutti tonic harmony on the third beat has become a tonic triad on the first beat and a dominant triad on the third:

Indeed, the accompaniment was so poorly represented in this earliest Ricordi edition of the Duetto Arsace, e Assur that Ricordi felt compelled to withdraw it and to substitute a “Seconda edizione” (so labeled), which is inserted into almost all known copies of the first Ricordi edition. I have personally examined only a single copy with the earlier edition of the Duetto, at the Biblioteca del Conservatorio “San Pietro a Majella” in Naples, where it once had the call number R-7-13. But Ricordi’s print had already done its damage, by giving rise to a whole group of French clones. Thus, its nefarious accompaniment was widely known to generations of musicians, who presumably believed it to be authentic.²²

In all the other early Ricordi extracts, the Duettino Semiramide – Arsace (N. 6), the Scena, e Aria Arsace (N. 9, 176-508), the Duetto Semiramide, e Arsace (N. 11), the Scena, Coro, e Aria Assur (N. 12), and the Terzetto from the Finale Secondo (N. 13, 266-299), the piano accompaniment is largely an accurate reduction of Rossini’s orchestral parts. It is so accurate, indeed, that the situation seems reversed from that of the Duetto Arsace, e Assur. Here Ricordi must have had access to a source that reproduced well either Rossini’s original orchestral fabric or a piano reduction of that fabric. Such a reduction could have been made or remembered by the musician who provided piano accompaniment for the singers during rehearsals. The vocal lines, on the other hand, must be the product of oral transmission, written down from memory by a Ricordi spy after hearing the opera night after night in the theater. They have been subjected to a series of interventions that range from outright mistakes and rhythmic distortions to modifications that might document variations introduced by the singers, providing evidence of how some of these melodic lines may actually have been sung in Venice. It is not always simple, however, to distinguish between an inaccurate rendering and a vocal variant. In the Scena, Coro, e Aria Assur, on the other hand, in addition to significant changes in the solo vocal lines, the choral interventions are not only practically unrecognizable, but also musically dreadful: they cannot be anything but an imperfectly-remembered rendition of Rossini’s music.

Some examples may help clarify these assertions. Here are the vocal parts of the first two measures in which Semiramide, Arsace, and Assur sing together during their Terzetto within the Finale Secondo, both as rendered in the Ricordi extract and as written by Rossini:

Rossini differentiates the two phrases beautifully, in volume, in harmonic goal, and most of all in texture: the dotted rhythms of “il mio valor dov’è” give way to the legato phrase for “dov’è il mio cor?...” The effect has been canceled in the Ricordi edition, which keeps chugging away in dotted rhythms. One could hypothesize that the Ricordi edition had carefully changed the final sonority, both to introduce the third degree (which Rossini does not employ) and to avoid Rossini’s parallel octaves in Semiramide and Assur. But the explanation is not convincing: notice that, at the end of the first phrase, Ricordi has modified Semiramide’s e'' to g'', creating parallel octaves between Semiramide and Assur where Rossini had none. I cannot imagine the singers (under Rossini’s direction) having modified his music in performance as in the Ricordi edition, nor is there evidence of any such change in any of the original vocal parts. This is simply an inaccurate, oral transcription. The Terzetto is filled with similar examples. The underlay of the text, in particular, is faulty almost from beginning to end.

Just as there is no reason to hypothesize that a change of this magnitude actually reflects what occured in the Venetian performances of an ensemble, so too there is no reason to imagine that Rossini’s effective and incisive choral parts in the Scena, Coro, e Aria Assur would have been rendered unrecognizable in performance. Yet the parts printed by Ricordi bear little relation to those of Rossini’s score. Here, for example, is the cadential figure at the end of the choral solo, “Ah! la sorte ci tradì...,” as written by Rossini and as printed in the Ricordi extract:

The transcriber heard something, but he didn’t quite remember the details. Similar problems are found throughout the scene.

In some cases, the readings of the Ricordi vocal score may reflect changes introduced by singers in performance. In the Duettino for Semiramide and Arsace (N. 6), for example, Semiramide has a complex figuration in the last measure of her first phrase. The Ricordi edition simplifies it. That the same change occurs in Arsace’s repetition of the phrase, however, suggests that the problem may have been one of transcription, rather than a singer’s intervention:

On the other hand it seems unlikely that the following is not the cadence actually sung at the end of the cabaletta theme of this Duettino during the Venetian performances: no Semiramide, as far as I know, has ever resisted the temptation to introduce the high b-flat at end of this cadence.

As is amply demonstrated in the critical edition, Rosa Mariani, the first Arsace, found the role somewhat high. Rossini himself introduced vocal variants directly in her part for the Cavatina (N. 2) in order to keep the tessitura comfortable.²³ In Arsace’s Coro, Scena, e Aria (N. 9), Rossini also entered two short variations in the singer’s part. Both are reflected in the early Ricordi extract. Since it is unlikely that Ricordi had this part in hand (there are extensive differences in almost every measure between the Ricordi printed extract and Mariani’s vocal part), we can be relatively certain that the publisher’s agent heard these phrases in the theater and transcribed them accordingly. Here is the beautiful phrase in which Arsace, now aware of his parentage, imagines that his tears will prompt Nino, his father, to forgive his guilty mother, Semiramide. It is given in three stages: as printed in the Ricordi vocal score, as written by Rossini, and as varied by Rossini in the performer’s part:

Certainly Rossini’s variant, which robs the repetition of the phrase of much of its melodic beauty, must be understood as a gracious gesture toward Mariani’s discomfort with a phrase that draws so much of its meaning from the high e-flat. On the other hand, there is no reason to believe the failure of the Ricordi score to transcribe correctly the composer’s many dotted rhythms throughout the phrase is anything more than either the reflection of an inaccurate performance or the sign of an inattentive scribe. While philologically untenable, then, the early Ricordi extracts offer important hints as to how Rossini’s singers may have actually performed the opera in 1823.²⁴

While Ricordi appears to have published this first set of extracts for voice and piano with impunity, the conflict between Ricordi and Artaria was ultimately resolved by circumventing it. The Teatro alla Scala, surely under pressure from Giuseppe Maria Franchetti, the governmental officer responsible for the Milanese theaters, made an agreement with Artaria during the summer of 1823, whereby the theater purchased a copy of the entire opera from the Viennese publisher, with the right to produce it in Milan (“for the sole use of the theater” [II: 159n]). The copy was duly made, and the first performance took place on 19 April 1824.²⁵ Since Ricordi’s long-standing contract as copyist and proprietor of music produced at La Scala remained in effect, his future publications of extracts from Semiramide, and ultimately of a complete reduction of the opera for piano and voices, no longer brought sharp denunciations from Artaria.

Finally, in 1825, Ricordi published an essentially complete vocal score, bringing together previously-issued extracts with most of the missing sections (this Ricordi edition of 1825 lacks the first-act Scena ed Aria Idreno N. 4), which was never performed during the original Venetian season. This vocal score, in oblong format, was originally issued as bound extracts, usually with a title page but without consecutive pagination, then was reissued with consecutive pagination (the music of the Sinfonia was always paginated apart, as 1-11 [or 2-12], followed by the entire opera on 1-316). New, consecutive plate numbers, were added throughout (although with some lacunae and errors). Not until Ricordi issued a new edition of the opera in 1857, as part of the “Nuova compiuta edizione di tutte le opere teatrali edite ed inedite, ridotte per Canto e Piano, del celebre Maestro Gioachino Rossini,” did they finally provide a reasonably accurate edition of the opera.

With the exception of the “second edition” of the Duetto Arsace, e Assur (N. 3), mentioned above, all other portions of Semiramide issued as extracts in 1823 by Ricordi continued to circulate within the first complete Ricordi edition. What is worse, these Ricordi prints, in turn, were a model for foreign editions, particularly those issued in Paris. Many of the errant Ricordi readings, to a greater or lesser extent, return in vocal scores issued in 1824 and 1825 by Carli, Janet et Cotelle, and Pacini, scores which continued to be used throughout the nineteenth century and were consulted by some of the great singers responsible for first returning Semiramide to the stage in the twentieth century. Even today, there are singers who perform the opera inaccurately by employing these fraudulently-obtained readings. Let us hope that the ready availability of the critical edition of Semiramide will finally lay the fruits of Ricordi’s 1823 piracy to rest. At the same time, let us also understand that these extracts, in part, may provide a faint record of what was actually heard at the Teatro La Fenice in February 1823.

1 This essay was originally published in Words on Music: Essays in Honor of Andrew Porter on the Occasion of His 75th Birthday, edited by David Rosen and Claire Brook (Hillsdale, N.Y., Pendragon Press, 2003).

2 See, for example, his “A Lost Opera by Rossini,” Music and Letters, XXXIX (1964), 39-44.

3 Proposals to bring Rossini to London and Paris, respectively, began to be formulated in 1816 and 1818 and continued for several years before his engagement at the King’s Theatre of London in 1823 and at the Théâtre Italien of Paris in 1824. See Gioachino Rossini, Lettere e documenti, ed. by Bruno Cagli and Sergio Ragni, 4 vols. (Pesaro, 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004), I: 147, 491, etc.

4 Rossini’s excellent relations with the Viennese publisher, Domenico Artaria, which developed during the course of his visit to Vienna, would have significant ramifications for the publication of Semiramide, as we shall see. For documentation pertaining to the first traces of their commercial relationship, see Lettere e documenti, II: 5, 14, 15, and 23. Further citations to Lettere e documenti are given in the text.

5 See Bernd Rüdiger Kern, “Rossini e Metternich,” in Bollettino del centro rossiniano di studi, XLIX (1999), 5-20.

6 The first surviving letter pertaining to the Congress is from Rossini to Metternich on 30 August 1822, but it makes clear that their discussions of Rossini’s participation had begun some time earlier. See Lettere e documenti, II: 39.

7 All official documents are currently housed in the La Fenice Archive deposited in the Library of the Fondazione Levi, Venice. This document was first printed by Remo Giazotto in “Alcune ignote vicende riguardanti la stampa e la diffusione della Semiramide,” Nuova rivista musicale italiana, II (1968), 961-70 (see 962).

8 Giuseppe Radiciotti, Gioacchino Rossini: vita documentata, opere ed influenza su l’arte (Tivoli, 1927-1929), 3 vols., I: 479-80.

9 Paolo Pinamonti, “Da ‘ornamento dell’Italia’ a ‘dominator musicale del mondo’: Rossini nella vita teatrale veneziana,” in Rossini 1792-1992. Mostra storico-documentaria, ed. by Mauro Bucarelli (Perugia, 1992), pp. 99-116 (see, in particular, pp. 114-5).

10 See Radiciotti, I: 483. The total number is uncertain, since local newspapers (which provide the most accurate information about performances) were not published on Sunday. Michele Girardi e Franco Rossi, in Il Teatro La Fenice: Cronologia degli spettacoli 1792-1936 (Venezia, 1989), pg. 94, list twenty-three verified dates.

11 Gioachino Rossini, Semiramide, ed. by Philip Gossett and Alberto Zedda in Edizione critiche delle opere di Gioachino Rossini (Pesaro, 2001), Series I, vol. 23. The Preface and all discussion of the Sources is entirely the work of Philip Gossett, some of which is reported in a different form and further developed in this study.

12 Some of this history was first related by Giazotto, “Alcune ignote vicende.”

14 In the Gazzetta di Milano of 31 May 1823, the music dealer Giovanni Meiners announced that he had just received from Vienna “a new assortment of choice music,” which included two Rossinian items: “Rossini. Sinfonia dell’opera Semiramide, ridotto pel piano forte di Schoberlechner, lir. 2.75, pel piano forte a 4 mani, lir. 4” and “Schoberlechner. Variazioni per il piano forte sul tema favorito, Serena i vaghi rai, nella detta opera, lir. 2.75.” Schoberlechner prepared these items for Artaria, and his reduction of the Sinfonia is included in the Artaria edition.

17 Artaria’s protest against Sauer & Leidesdorf was evidently successful, for the firm did not issue Semiramide in its standard format (piano solo) or any other.

19 It seems likely that the Scena, Coro, e Aria Assur (N. 12), which has no heading and begins on p. 2, must have been issued with a title page, but no such page is present in any of the complete copies of the Ricordi vocal score that I examined during preparation of the critical edition.

20 Our sources for Semiramide also include the original performing parts, vocal and orchestral, which are housed at the Fondazione Levi, Venice.

22 This copy was inaccessible as I prepared this study. Citations from the “Ricordi” edition of the Duetto, therefore, are transcribed from the edition published in Paris by Pacini in c. 1825 (the first of two Pacini editions of the opera), which for the most part was derived directly from the Ricordi score.

23 These variants are printed in Semiramide, Appendix II, p. 1445; see also the relative critical notes.

24 The critical notes to each of these numbers in the critical edition of Semiramide offer transcriptions of the most significant passages in the Ricordi extracts that differ from Rossini’s score.

25 This copy is today housed in the Biblioteca del Conservatorio “G. Verdi” of Milan (383-18-2).

Piracy in Venice: The Selling of Semiramide 1

Philip Gossett

Piracy in Venice: The Selling of Semiramide ¹