The Marriage Contract

Composer: ROSSINI, Gioachino
  • Rossini composed La cambiale di matriomonio for the Teatro S. Moisé in Venice. It premiered in November 1810.1
    • This was Rossini’s first professional opera. He composed it at the age of 18.2
    • Because this theater produced compact operas with a limited cast, Rossini opined later in life that writing for them was excellent for him as a young composer still perfecting his craft.3
  • Genre: this opera is a farsa, a one-act Italian opera genre that was popular in the late 18th and early 19th C. The genre featured a small cast with set types of roles, usually a set of lovers, a couple comic roles and one or two minor characters. The genre featured a lot of improvised physical stage humor.4
  • La cambiale di matrimonio was based on a play written in 1791 by Italian actor and dramatist Camillo Federici.5
  • Story: an English merchant (Mr Mill) is sent a marriage contract from a Canadian businessman (Mr Slook). Mill wants to take this opportunity to get his daughter Fanny married off, but her poor lover Edward threatens Slook if he doesn’t back out, and then Mill threatens Slook if he does back out, and Slook loses it and escapes back to Canada, after leaving his money and marriage contract to Edward and Fanny.6
    • Fun fact: Fanny’s aria near the end of the show, “Vorrei speigarvi il giubilio,” includes material that Rossini later recycled for the character of Rosina in The Barber of Seville. 

Sources

  1. Philip Gossett and Richard Osborne, “Rossini, Gioachino (opera),” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed January 9, 2020, https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000004337.
  2.  Richard Osborne, “Cambiale di matrimonio, La,” Grove Music Online (2002), accessed January 9, 2020,  https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-5000008230. 
  3. Gossett and Osborne, “Rossini, Gioachino (opera),” Grove Music Online.
  4. Carlo Piazza, trans. Sarah J. Hyde, “Il signor Bruschino,” Accademia degli Incogniti: Festival di Torrechiara, accessed January 9, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20070603195513/http://www.festivalditorrechiara.it/ENGbruschino.htm. 
  5. Osborne, “Cambiale di matrimonio, La,” Grove Music Online. 
  6. Ibid.

Cut IDs

11138, 41993