The Metropolitan Opera: Semiramide

Semiramide (Italian pronunciation: [semiˈraːmide]) is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto by Gaetano Rossi is based on Voltaire's tragedy Semiramis, which in turn was based on the legend of Semiramis of Assyria. The opera was first performed at La Fenice in Venice on 3 February 1823. Semiramide was Rossini's final Italian opera and according to Richard Osborne, "could well be dubbed Tancredi Revisited". As in Tancredi, Rossi's libretto was based on a Voltaire tragedy. The music makes full use of a large pit orchestra, and was inspired by the vocal traditions of Rossini's youth. The opera is a melodrama in which Rossini "recreated the baroque tradition of decorative singing with unparalleled skill". After the opera's completion, Rossini moved from Italy to Paris. Apart from Il viaggio a Reims, which is still in Italian, his last operas were either original compositions in French or extensively reworked adaptations into French of earlier Italian operas. Musicologist Rodolfo Celletti sums up the importance of Semiramide by stating that it "was the last opera of the great Baroque tradition: the most beautiful, the most imaginative, possibly the most complete; but also, irremediably, the last."