Il viaggio a Reims

*Il viaggio a Reims*
Il viaggio a Reims
Dramma giocoso by Gioachino Rossini
	Rossini c. 1820
Librettist	Luigi Balocchi
Language	Italian
Based on	Corinne ou l'Italie; by Germaine de Staël
Premiere	19 June 1825; Théâtre Italien, Paris

Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro (The Journey to Reims, or The Hotel of the Golden Fleur-de-lis) is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts,^[1] by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi [ca], based in part on the 1807 novel Corinne ou l'Italie by Germaine de Staël.

Rossini's last opera in the Italian language (all of his later works were in French) premiered under the title Le voyage à Reims, ou l'Hôtel du Lys-d'Or. It was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of French King Charles X in Reims in May 1825 and has been acclaimed as one of Rossini's finest compositions. A demanding work, it requires 14 soloists (three sopranos, one contralto, two tenors, four baritones, and four basses). At its premiere, it was sung by the greatest voices of the day.

Since the opera was written for a specific occasion, with a plot about European aristocrats, officers – and one poetess – en route to join in the French coronation festivities that the opera itself was composed for, Rossini never intended it to have a life beyond a few performances in Paris. He later re-used about half of the music in Le comte Ory.

Il viaggio a Reims does not have an overture.^[2] Its so-called overture, derived from a set of dances in Le siège de Corinthe (1826), one of which Rossini had reworked from the dances in the finale to Il viaggio a Reims,^[1] is a twentieth-century invention or an erroneous attribution. It was published in Milan, in 1938, in a revision by Giuseppe Piccioli,^[3] which was first performed in the Teatro alla Scala, on 5 November 1938, conducted by Richard Strauss.^[2] It was later also recorded repeatedly as the alleged overture of Il viaggio a Reims, until it was finally possible to reconstruct the original score of the opera. The attributed overture remains one of Rossini's most recorded works.

^ ^a ^b Janet Johnson: A Lost Masterpiece Recovered, pp. 37–38 of the liner notes to the 1984 DG recording.
^ ^a ^b (in Italian) Roberto Maietta, Per un catalogo del “Fondo Giuseppe Piccioli”: inquadramento delle opere e catalogo delle edizioni, Thesis for the triennial degree in musicology, University of Cremona, Faculty of Musicology, academic year 2009–2010: Catalogo delle opere edite del “Fondo Giuseppe Piccioli”, p. 22, note 5 (published in the online Library of the Faculty of Musicology of the University of Pavia). Maietta's declared source is the preface (Prefazione) to the critical edition of the opera, edited by Janet J. Johnson: Il viaggio a Reims, ossia, L'albergo del Giglio d'oro, dramma giocoso in un atto di Luigi Balocchi, musica di Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, 1999, I, p. xxxv
^ Il viaggio a Reims. Sinfonia / Gioacchino Rossini, revisione di Giuseppe Piccioli – Partitura – Milan : Carisch, 1938

[Johnson-1] Janet Johnson: A Lost Masterpiece Recovered, pp. 37–38 of the liner notes to the 1984 DG recording.

[Maietta-2] (in Italian) Roberto Maietta, Per un catalogo del “Fondo Giuseppe Piccioli”: inquadramento delle opere e catalogo delle edizioni, Thesis for the triennial degree in musicology, University of Cremona, Faculty of Musicology, academic year 2009–2010: Catalogo delle opere edite del “Fondo Giuseppe Piccioli”, p. 22, note 5 (published in the online Library of the Faculty of Musicology of the University of Pavia). Maietta's declared source is the preface (Prefazione) to the critical edition of the opera, edited by Janet J. Johnson: Il viaggio a Reims, ossia, L'albergo del Giglio d'oro, dramma giocoso in un atto di Luigi Balocchi, musica di Gioachino Rossini, Pesaro, Fondazione Rossini, 1999, I, p. xxxv

[3] Il viaggio a Reims. Sinfonia / Gioacchino Rossini, revisione di Giuseppe Piccioli – Partitura – Milan : Carisch, 1938

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