

Rossini, revolution and Albany


Rossini became the most famous opera composer in Europe in the seven years he was in Naples, from 1815 to 1822. He was a rising star when he became director of the San Carlo Opera in Naples in 1815 at the age of 22. When he left Naples in 1822 he was feted in Vienna, London, and Paris. Receptions were held in his honor. His operas were performed before eager audiences. He was a musical superstar.

Detail of a portrait of Caroline of Bourbon-Tw...

Detail of a portrait of Caroline of Bourbon-Two Sicilies (1798–1870), Duchess of Berry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Rossini wrote the two operas for which he is best known today when he was in Naples, although neither was performed in that city. He wrote “The Barber of Seville,” in 1816 (in 13 days), and he wrote “Cenerentola” (Cinderella) in 1817. He wrote a cantata between these operas to celebrate the marriage of a teenage Neapolitan princess, Maria Carolina, to the much older Duke of Berry, the probable heir to the French throne. The bride and groom had not met when Rossini wrote the wedding cantata. They met just before they were married. The marriage was strictly political. Its sole purpose was to continue the recently restored Bourbon dynasty in France.

Rossini alluded to the Duke of Berry in “Cenerentola” when a valet disguised as a prince first appears. He sings of his flitting to lilies and roses seeking sweet blossoms as if they were fair maids, “thousands already and many more.” The Duke of Berry was a womanizer. He had many affairs before his marriage and many in the five years of his marriage, before he was murdered. That Rossini alluded to Berry’s sexual exploits in “Cenerentola” suggests how well-informed he was about the libidinous husband, for whom he had written a wedding cantata.

Revolution broke out in Naples in 1820 and the Duke of Berry was assassinated at the Paris opera in the same year, to prevent him from becoming a king of France. The 1820 revolutions threatened the established political order in Europe. Austria sent an army to Italy in 1821 to restore the King of Naples to full power. Rossini was in Naples when an Austrian army crushed a Neapolitan army. He left Naples in 1822, vowing not to return. He went to Vienna, Paris, and London, and when he returned to Paris in 1824 he became head of the leading opera house. It was for that theater that he wrote his first Paris opera, “The Journey to Reims” a work was performed before the newly-crowned king, Charles X.

Rossini set “The Journey to Reims” to an Italian text. Paris audiences would not have understood what Rossini did in this opera. It was a wickedly funny satire on the newly-crowned king, a playboy before the French Revolution, whose scandals and excesses contributed to weakening of the monarchy. The youngest brother of Louis XVI, he was among the first to flee the Revolution in 1789. He fought against it and was an extreme reactionary and religious zealot when he ascended the throne in 1824.

“The Voyage of Reims” is about aristocrats who come together in a resort town before departing for Reims, to attend the coronation of Charles X. They never left the hotel; they had a party instead. Rossini satirized the aristocrats in the opera and the religiosity with which the coronation ceremony was draped. This opera was a bombshell that never exploded. The audience didn’t see what Rossini had done. He was ill for three months after its three performances, the only ones that Rossini allowed.

Rossini’s last opera, “William Tell,” was performed in Paris in 1829. He had requested a lifetime pension in 1827 but the request was denied. When rehearsals were being held for the eagerly-awaited “William Tell” in 1829, Rossini threatened to prevent its performance unless he was given a lifetime annuity. He had played hardball and it worked. Charles X signed a contract giving Rossini what he wanted.

The king for whose coronation Rossini had written an opera imposed reactionary measures that brought about the Revolution of 1830. Charles X was driven from the throne. His son, the Duke of Berry had been murdered in 1820. His wife, the Neapolitan princess he had married in 1816, bore his son posthumously. He was the “miracle child,” the last hope of preserving the Bourbon dynasty, the legitimate heir to the Bourbon throne, which he never occupied.

The Neapolitan princess, Marie Caroline, for whom Rossini had written a wedding cantata, was in Paris when he first went there in 1823. He met her at one of her musical evenings. He performed at the piano and mingled with guests. Marie Caroline knew of her husband’s many fidelities, which she seems to have accepted as if they were business as usual. She was 22 when her husband was assassinated and 32 when her father-in-law, Charles X, was driven from his throne. Marie Caroline went to England after the 1830 revolution but she returned to France to lead the cause of her 11-year-old son and that of the legitimist Bourbon cause. It all sounds like an opera buffa.

When Marie Caroline returned to France in 1831 she stayed at a country estate outside Bordeaux of the de La Tours de Pin, who had escaped France during the Reign of Terror and lived on a farm outside Albany, NY, on what is now Delatour Road. Lucy, Mme de La Tour du Pin, wrote her memoirs years after she returned to France from Albany. She felt that the two years she spent on her farm were the happiest of her life. She came to Albany after receiving an invitation from Philip Schuyler. She met Schuyler’s son-in-law, Stephen van Rensselaer III, her first day in Albany. She also met another of Schuyler’s sons-in-law, Alexander Hamilton. Lucy was preparing a lamb for dinner in front of a log house south of Troy when someone appeared behind her and announced that he had never seen a lamb spitted with such majesty. The voice was that of Talleyrand, who had also fled Revolutionary France. He had ties to every government in France from that of Louis XVI to Louis-Phillipe, the king who followed Charles X.

To read Lucy’s memoirs is to hear the sound of the guillotine and the roar of cheering crowds. It is to see her desperate efforts, ultimately successful, to save her family when they went into hiding during the Reign of Terror. It is to see her in Albany and New York City. It is to see her in Paris. It is to see her conversing with Napoleon. It is to see her when she meets Marie Caroline, to whom Rossini had alluded in his 1825 opera, “The Journey to Reims.”

When Marie Caroline returned to France she placed herself at the head of the legitimist cause. Her son was to reclaim a crown that was rightfully his. Vigée-Lebrun and Thomas Lawrence had both done portraits of Marie Caroline; she was elegant and sophisticated. The cause she led in 1831-32 was utterly doomed. She wore trousers when Lucy met her. She had seen strange people living on a farm outside Albany: Indians, Shakers, Negroes (she had a Negro slave to whom she granted freedom before she returned to France); she had seen French worthies from Marie-Antoinette to Napoleon. Yet her encounter with Marie Caroline was surely one of her most unexpected and bizarre encounters ever.

Marie Caroline was at the head of a ragtag army that was to install the adolescent son of a philandering father on the throne of France. France was weary of the Bourbons at this time. Marie-Caroline’s following was quickly defeated. She went into hiding, was captured and put in prison. She was pregnant, having married secretly, a fact that was unknown to those who followed her. Pregnant and discredited, she was released from prison. Lucy’s husband, who along with one of her sons had joined the legitimist cause, was sent to prison. Lucy spent her last years in Italy. This is where she wrote her memoirs. She died in Pisa in 1853.

Rossini was in Florence when Lucy died; he had suffered a complete emotional and physical breakdown. He had married a former courtesan who became his caretaker; she took him back to Paris in 1855. Rossini had become wealthy when he was the most famous opera composer in Europe. He had a town house in Paris and a palace in Passy, west of the capital. He was a relic of the past when he died in Paris in 1868. He had been the most famous and important opera composer when he wrote 37 operas between 1812 and 1829. He never wrote another opera after his last one, “William Tell.” Revolution broke out in the following year. Rather than write another opera, Rossini spent five years in an effort, ultimately successful, to keep the lifetime pension that Charles X had granted him. This too sounds like an opera buffa.



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Warren Roberts

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