Le siège de Corinthe (The Siege of Corinth) is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini to a French libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, based on Maometto II by Cesare della Valle. It was Rossini's first French opera, known also in its Italian version as L'assedio di Corinto.
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The opera commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of the town of Missolonghi in 1826 by Turkish during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). The reference to Corinth is an example of allegory, although Sultan Mehmed II had indeed besieged the city in the 1450s. This same incident - condemned throughout Western Europe for its cruelty - also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo. Lord Byron's 1816 poem The Siege of Corinth has little, if any, connection with the opera.
The French version of this late Rossini opera was a partial rewrite of the composer's earlier Italian opera entitled Maometto II, but with exactly the same story and characters, in the setting of the Turks' 1470 conquest of the Venetian colony of Negroponte. That original version had premiered in Naples on December 3, 1820—six years before the Missolonghi siege and massacre. The 1820 opera was not well received, neither in Naples nor in Venice where Rossini tried out a somewhat revised version in 1823.
But in 1826, two years after settling in Paris, Rossini tried yet again, with yet another version (including two ballets, as called for by French operatic tradition), transplanted it to Greece with the new title Le siège de Corinthe in a topical nod to the then-raging Greek war for independence from the Ottomans, and translated it into French. This time, Rossini succeeded, and the opera was performed in various countries over the next decade or so.
The first performance, in French, was at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826. It was given as L'assedio di Corinto in Parma on 26 January 1828 and it reached Vienna in July 1831. The opera remained popular throughout the 1830s in Europe and then disappeared entirely from the repertory for roughly the next one hundred years. However, the opera's overture remained widely popular and never left the concert orchestra repertory. More recently the overture has been performed and recorded by several contemporary classical orchestras, including the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields conducted by Neville Marriner.
In 1949 Le siège de Corinthe was finally revived again in a production starring Renata Tebaldi in Florence. That production was repeated two years later in Rome. In 1969 La Scala revived it for the Rossini centennial with the young Beverly Sills, in her European debut, as Pamyra, Marilyn Horne as Neocle, and Thomas Schippers conducting. The opera used a performing edition by noted musicologist and bel canto expert Randolph Mickelson that interpolated arias from the original Neapolitan and Venetian versions and even from other obscure Rossini operas (as of course Rossini himself commonly did). According to The New Yorker writer Joseph Wechsberg, that production also rates the distinction of having been the first at La Scala in which the conductor insisted on having a spotlight illuminating his head throughout the entire performance. In 1975, the Metropolitan Opera used the La Scala version for the United States premiere of the opera. The Met production was conducted by Schippers again and starred Beverly Sills in her Met debut, now opposite Shirley Verrett, Justino Díaz and Harry Theyard.
Since 1975, the only production of the opera in the US has been the October 2006 staging of the French version by the Baltimore Opera, in a mid-19th century re-translation back into Italian, with one aria interpolated from one of the predecessor "Maometto II" versions and one from Rossini's "Ciro in Babilonia" which featured Elizabeth Futral as Pamira and Viveca Geneaux as Neocle. The last performance was on October 22, 2006.
Outside the US the opera has been staged several times. It was produced in Florence in 1982 in Calisto Bassi's Italian version, starring Katia Ricciarelli with contralto (Martine Dupuy) singing the role of Neocle instead of a tenor, and under the direction of Pier Luigi Pizzi. The same production was given in Genoa, where the original French version was produced in 1992 starring Luciana Serra.
| Role | Voice type | Premiere Cast, October 9, 1826 (Conductor: François Antoine Habeneck) |
|---|---|---|
| Cléomène, Governor of Corinth | tenor | Louis Nourrit |
| Pamira, his daughter | soprano | Laure Cinti-Damoreau |
| Néoclès, a young Greek officer | tenor | Adolphe Nourrit |
| Mahomet II | bass | Henri-Étienne Dérivis |
| Adraste | tenor | Bonel |
| Hiéros | bass | Alexandre-Aimé Prévost |
| Ismène | mezzo-soprano | Frémont |
| Omar | tenor | Ferdinand Prévôt |
Maometto's tent
The catacombs
| Year | Cast: Cléomène, Pamira, Néoclès, Maometto |
Conductor, Opera House and Orchestra |
Label [1] |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1969 | Franco Bonisolli, Beverly Sills, Marilyn Horne, Justino Díaz |
Thomas Schippers, Teatro alla Scala Orchestra and Chorus (Recording of a performance of the version prepared by Thomas Schippers and Randolph Mickelson at La Scala, 14 April) |
Audio CD: Arkadia Cat: CD 573; Legato Classics Cat: LCD 135-2; Celestial Audio Cat: CA 034 |
| 1975 | Harry Theyard, Beverly Sills, Shirley Verrett, Justino Díaz |
Thomas Schippers, Metropolitan Opera Orchestra and Chorus (Recording of a performance at the MET given in Italian in a version prepared by Thomas Schippers for La Scala, under the title ‘’L'Assedio de Corinthe’’) |
Audio CD: Bensar Cat: OL 41975 |
| 1992 | Dano Raffanti, Luciana Serra, Maurizio Comencini, Marcello Lippi |
Paolo Olmi, Teatro Carlo Felice di Genova Orchestra and Chorus |
Audio CD: Nuova Era Cat: 7140-7142 & Cat: NE 7372/3 |
| 2000 | Stephen Mark Brown, Ruth Ann Swenson, Giuseppe Filianoti, Michele Pertusi |
Maurizio Benini, Opéra National de Lyon Orchestra and the Prague Chamber Chorus (Recording of a performance in French at the Rossini Opera Festival, Pesaro, 5 August) |
Audio CD: House of Opera Cat: CD 597; Charles Handelman, Live Opera Cat: (unnumbered) |