Gölün_Hanımı_(opera)
Hazırlanma, içerik ve temsiller
The period between La gazza ladra (1817) and Semiramide (1823) was marked by the production of twelve operas of little significance, with the exception of La donna del lago.[7] After being obliged to leave Pesaro hurriedly in May 1819 (it turned out to be his last visit there), Rossini returned to Naples in early June with no projects in the offing, except to become involved with overseeing a new production of his La gazza ladra there. Also, a commission from Milan's La Scala for an opera, which would become Bianca e Falliero, had been offered and was planned for December of that year. Suddenly, the Italian composer Gaspare Spontini withdrew from a commitment to write two operas for the Naples house that season, thus leaving a huge gap. Rossini was quickly asked to write an opera for a September premiere; rather than use an existing libretto, the house insisted upon a wholly new opera and he accepted the challenge.[8] It seems Rossini was initially attracted to Scott's poem when, in musicologist Philip Gossett's opinion,[9] he was introduced to it in translation by the young French composer Désiré-Alexandre Batton, a student of his and Prix de Rome winner then in Italy. On hearing about the poem from Batton, Rossini asked for a copy and within a few days informed Batton he was so delighted with it he would compose an opera based on it.[5] He then immediately called upon the Naples-based librettist Andrea Leone Tottola (who is described as "a comparative mediocrity when set against the likes of a Felice Romani)".[10][5] Later, the librettist claimed the topic for "this difficult task" had been chosen by the Naples impresario.[8] As he worked on the libretto, Tottola "was also intrigued by the epic Celtic tales of Ossian"[11] published in 1760 by James Macpherson, who claimed to have found poems written by an ancient bard. The published translations acquired international popularity and set off a craze for idealising and romanticizing the Scottish Highlands.[12][13] Napoleon and Thomas Jefferson read the Ossian poems, Goethe included them in The Sorrows of Young Werther, and Schubert and Mendelssohn both composed music to them. The young Walter Scott was also greatly influenced by them.[11] Initially, Tottola was well aware of the difficulties which he faced in reducing Scott's epic poem, with its detailed descriptions of the Scottish landscape and culture as well as its many characters. In his preface, the librettist summed it up by stating: It is, in fact, no easy task to simplify the many beauties and many moments of interest of a poem in order to arrive at the regular conduct of a drama and to observe the strict laws of the stage. It therefore became unavoidable that I should make some arbitrary changes in the original ...[14] But together, composer and librettist, reflecting the poetic meter of the Ossian tales, "strove to interweave a sense of these very rhythms into the score and libretto."[11] Richard Osborne describes what they accomplished: It is astonishing what he and Tottola achieved in so short a time: a complex and sophisticated theatrical structure, an unusually rich vein of dramatically viable melody, exquisite orchestrations, and a striking use of the kind of off-stage effects Rossini had been experimenting with in the royal pageants of Ricciardo e Zoraide.[8] Osborne also notes the way in which "the source materials have been interwoven, giving the sense of a music drama that has in some measure been 'through-composed'."[15] Gossett is less enthusiastic, noting that "it is almost impossible for Italian poetry to capture the quality of Scott's characteristic verse," but he does agree that "the spirit of the poem is there".[9]