La Cenerentola
Music by Gioacchino Rossini

About the Opera

Notes by Katie Lundeen

            Gioacchino Rossini’s (1792–1868) La Cenerentola premiered in the Teatro Valle in Rome on January 25, 1817. During this time, the ensemble at Teatro Valle performed newly composed operas nearly every season. Although formally employed in the famed Teatro San Carlo in Naples roughly during the years 1815–23, Rossini was able to premiere the work in Rome because of the financial success of his works at the Teatro San Carlo, not to mention his international star status. When Rossini’s librettist, Giacomo Ferretti, was initially concerned about the somewhat tepid reception in Rome after the first performance, Rossini responded, “You fool! … In two years it will enchant French and amaze English audiences. Theater managers will fight for it, and so will the primadonnas.” Rossini’s comments were indeed on the mark, but he was too modest about the time in which La Cenerentola would become a hit. It took only a few performances for La Cenerentola to triumph and enjoy immense popularity in Italy and abroad, including the cities of London, Vienna, Paris, Berlin, Moscow, Buenos Aires, and New York. Rossini’s international fame grew even further with this work.

            In La Cenerentola, Rossini featured a style of opera known as semiseria or drama giocoso, Ferretti’s libretto providing a fitting mixture of tragic potential and comic elements, suitable for a melodramatic musical setting. One instance of a mournful tune occurs with Angelina’s first entrance onstage (“Una volta”), in which she sings a repetitive tune to herself in a minor key, meant to represent her misfortune. Stock comic elements abound in La Cenerentola, featuring typical plots of mistaken identity and high points of utter confusion onstage.

            The musical score reinforces these plot elements—particularly those dealing with confusion—in several ways. These include individual character moments, onstage ensembles, and orchestration. For example, Angelina’s father seems to be in a perpetual state of plotting (which later turns into confusion), and Rossini often uses “patter” declamation, or syllabic singing, to represent this. More generally, Rossini musically depicts confusion onstage in ensembles. The characters appear completely immersed in their own thoughts, creating the effect of each singing an aside. Each seems so lost in thought that resolution seems impossible. Furthermore, Rossini presents a character’s confusion in the midst of a harmonious ensemble. In such instances, it is difficult, if not impossible, to hear the complete text and melody of individual lines. There are several examples of this type of ensemble throughout La Cenerentola, often occurring at the end of the acts. Finally, the ensemble confusion is also particularly effective offstage in the orchestra pit. The “Rossini crescendo” is a purely instrumental musical effect used to build a gradual crescendo by increasing dynamic levels, number of instruments, and by increasingly diminishing note duration. During a Rossini crescendo, the text ceases to be important.

            Despite the prominence of the ensemble, however, the virtuosic solo arias and vocal display in La Cenerentola reveal the special importance of the individual singers. The solo moments allow the singers to control the pace of the music. In addition, singers in the 19^th century would often compose their own ornamentations and elaborations to their arias. Among the many fine singers favored by Rossini was Mme. Laure Cinti-Damoreau, one of the leading operatic sopranos, who sang the title role in La Cenerentola in Paris in 1823. Cinti-Damoreau left several notebooks of her ornamentations to arias that she sang.  These ornamentations, known as points d’orgue, included cadenzas to be sung at the close of an aria and variations on already written passages. Cinti-Damoreau’s notebooks are held in the collection of Indiana University’s Lilly Library, and are presently on display there.  An example of Cinti-Damoreau’s virtuosic embellishments from the Act II finale of La Cenerentola is included here.

Laure Cinti-Damoreau, Méthode de chant compose pour ses classes
du Conservatoire par Mme. Cinti-Damoreau

(December 1849)

Courtesy Lilly Library, Indiana University Bloomington