I/24
Mosč in Egitto
Azione tragico-sacra
in three acts by
ANDREA LEONE TOTTOLA
First performance:
Naples - Teatro San Carlo
5 March 1818
Critical Edition by
CHARLES S. BRAUNER
FONDAZIONE ROSSINI PESARO
2004
Finalist, Claude Palisca Award of the American Musicological Society, 2005
CHARACTERS:
FARAONE, King of Egypt, bass
AMALTEA, his wife, soprano
OSIRIDE, heir to the throne, tenor
ELCIA, a Hebrew, his secret wife, soprano
MAMBRE, tenor
MOSČ, bass
ARONNE, tenor
AMENOFI, sister of Aronne, mezzo-soprano
Mixed chorus of Hebrews and Egyptians
The scene is laid in Egypt
Instrumentation: 2 Flutes/2 Piccolos, 2 Oboes, 2
Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 4 Horns, 2 Trumpets, 3 Trombones, Serpent,
Timpani, Bass Drum, Cymbals, Triangle, Banda Turca, Harp,
Strings. Onstage: Band (Piccolo, Quartino, 4 Clarinets, 2 Horns, 4 Trumpets, 2 Trombones, Serpent, Bass Drum)
Performance time: 2h 30m
Rossini's Mosè in Egitto belongs to the genre of staged oratorio cultivated
in Italy in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries for performance during
Lent. Essentially a three-act opera seria on a biblical subject, it tells the
story of the Exodus of the Israelites from Egypt under the leadership of Moses
and includes three of the ten plagues suffered by the Egyptians because of Pharaoh's
refusal to liberate the Israelites. In addition, the librettist (Tottola), borrowing
from an eighteenth-century drama, inserted a love affair between Pharaoh's son
(Osiride) and an Israelite girl (Elcia); Osiride, not wishing to lose Elcia
(who has become his wife), incites Pharaoh's obstinacy, which leads to Osiride's
death (as part of the final plague, the slaying of the first-born).
The opera opens without an overture: three octave C's in the orchestra are
followed by the plague of darkness in a stark ensemble in C minor built over
a repeated orchestral figure. The return to light in the next number occurs
over a C-major chord. Each act contains a long ensemble in strophic or near-strophic
form: the reaction to the return of light, the reaction to the discovery of
the love between Elcia and Osiride, and the hymn of praise by the Israelites
just before they cross through the Red Sea. The last two of these ensembles,
"Mi manca la voce" and the preghiera "Dal tuo stellato soglio,"
were the most popular pieces in the opera in the nineteenth century, and George
Bernard Shaw, no Rossinian, had the highest praise for "Dal tuo stellato
soglio." The opera also features a duet for Elcia and Osiride and one for
Osiride and Pharaoh and an extended aria for Elcia (Osiride's death occurs in
the middle of it). The ending, an orchestral passage accompanying the drowning
of the Egyptians in the Red Sea and the calming of the sea afterwards, repeats
the C minor to C major progression of the beginning of Act I.
The critical edition reproduces the opera as it existed in 1820. The original
third act is found only in the libretto of 1818; no music survives. Rossini
revised this act in 1819 after the original version had proved difficult to
stage and had met with the audience's derision (the premiere was otherwise a
great success). "Dal tuo stellato soglio" is part of this revision.
The opera also originally had an aria for Pharaoh composed by Rossini's friend
Michele Carafa; in 1820, Rossini wrote his own aria, and Carafa's was removed.
However, in the nineteenth century the opera was almost always performed with
Carafa's aria, and this is included in an appendix to the edition. The edition
also includes ornamentation that was used in Paris in some of the numbers as
well as detailed information on performances of the opera in Paris from 1822
to 1840.