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Edipo Coloneo

[Oedipus at Colonus]

Tragedy by Sophocles rendered in Italian verse by
GIAMBATTISTA GIUSTI

Critical Edition by
LORENZO TOZZI
and
PIERO WEISS

FONDAZIONE ROSSINI PESARO 1985

CHARACTERS:
CHORUS OF OLD MEN OF ATTICA, tenors and basses
CORIFEO (chorus leader), bass

The scene is in Attica near the Temple of the Furies

Instrumentation: 2 Flutes/Piccolo, 2 Oboes/2 English Horns, 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani, Bass Drum, Strings

Around 1814 Giambattista Giusti, a man of letters from Lucca working as an engineer in Bologna, commissioned Rossini to provide stage music for his translation of the Greek tragedian Sophocles's Oedipus at Colonus. Following a series of disputes between the two (the composer never completed orchestrating the work), Rossini took back the score, made some corrections, and then returned it to Giusti, still without the greater part of the orchestration. Later another composer, writing directly in Rossini's autograph, finished the orchestration.

In the manuscript, preserved today in The Morgan Library in New York, Rossini's hand is clearly distinguishable from that of the anonymous orchestrator, and the critical edition makes graphic distinctions so the reader can at once see the compositional stages of this unique piece.

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