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Tancredi

Melodramma eroico in two acts by
GAETANO ROSSI
 

First performance:
Venice – Teatro La Fenice
6 February 1813

Critical Edition by
PHILIP GOSSETT

FONDAZIONE ROSSINI PESARO 1984

CHARACTERS:
ARGIRIO, tenor
TANCREDI, contralto
ORBAZZANO, bass
AMENAIDE, soprano
ISAURA, contralto
ROGGIERO, mezzo-soprano (tenor in the Milanese revision)
Male chorus of nobles, knights, squires, people, Saracens*
Warriors, pages, guards, people, ladies-in-waiting, Saracens*, silent.

* The Saracens appear only in the Venetian version of the score.

The scene is in Syracuse in the year 1005

Instrumentation: 2 Flutes/Piccolo, 2 Oboes/English Horn 2 Clarinets, 2 Bassoons, 2 Horns, 2 Trumpets, Timpani, Banda turca, Strings, Continuo
Performance time: 2h 45m

With Tancredi, Rossini achieved maturity as a composer and established himself in Italy and abroad as the leading composer of Italian opera seria. After the first Venetian season, the opera was performed in Ferrara, where important changes were suggested by Luigi Lechi, who introduced a tragic finale, bringing the plot closer to that of the play by Voltaire. In Milan Rossini restored the happy ending, also providing much new material for a changed cast.

The Critical Edition presents all the authentic sections, establishing as the basic text that of the first Venetian production, but providing all the revisions in an appendix, thus allowing ample freedom of choice from among the various legitimate versions.

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