Rossini: Sigismondo (Keri-Lynn Wilson) (2CDs, Br-Klassik)

The Italian composer Gioachino Rossini is best known for his operas; Several of the overtures and arias were really catchy tunes at the time and they have remained so up to our day. Although his comic operas are primarily performed today, more than half of his stage works are based on serious themes. A veritable rarity is the stage work Sigismondo, which was performed at the famous Teatro La Fenice in Venice in 1814, but was only rarely performed afterwards. Presumably the contemporary audience did not like the underlying story, because musically the work is hardly less convincing than the Italian in Algiers created the year before or the barber of Seville who followed two years later. The subject is based on a long tradition and Rossini presents his protagonist, the fictional King Sigismondo, in his extreme psychological states: inner sensitivities become apparent through confusion and mental derangement; only delirium brings the truth to light. This insane opera is just as topical in terms of its subject matter as it is in its musical language, because Rossini is one of the top ten most performed composers of our time. The little-known, but urgently-to-be-discovered masterpiece was performed in concert form in Munich’s Prinzregententheater on October 14, 2018; in its original language and by interpreters who are very experienced in the apparently easy and difficult to sing Rossini subject.