Vanessa Benelli Mosell

On December 15, 1815, Rossini signed a contract with the Teatro Argentina in Rome, committing to deliver an opera buffa by January 20, 1816. He would later claim to have composed the music in just 13 days, although in reality he partly drew on earlier works. The symphony that serves as the opera’s overture, which would ultimately find its permanent home, with a new arrangement, in Il barbiere di Siviglia, is in fact taken from Aureliano in Palmira, commissioned by Milan’s Teatro alla Scala in 1813, and reused again in 1815 for Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra. Beethoven’s lively Fourth Symphony follows the popular Eroica and precedes the dramatic Fifth Symphony, with its famous fate motif. For this reason, the “maiden of slender Greek beauty between two Nordic giants” (Robert Schumann) has often, and unjustly, been overlooked. One year after the premiere of Il barbiere di Siviglia, Schubert began his Sixth Symphony, elaborating on “classical” models while already seeking new paths to explore. He drew particular inspiration from Haydn and Mozart, and in the fourth movement also from Rossini, whose vibrant musical theatre had already reached Vienna before the city was swept up in the true “Rossini craze” that began in 1822. As Schubert wrote in a letter as early as May 1819, the Italian opera star “certainly cannot be denied extraordinary genius.”