Le siège de Corinthe is a 1826 reworking, for Opéra de Paris, of Rossini’s earlier Maometto II so besides, of course, being in French it is restructured as a three act tragédie lyrique with a substantial ballet in Act 2. The plot is straightforward enough. It’s the mid fifteenth century. Mahomet II is besieging Corinth but unknown to him the king, Cléomène’s, daughter Palmyra is the girl he fell in love with during an incognito trip to Athens. Cléone has promised Palmyra to his top warrior Néoclès. After Corinth falls Mahomet promises clemency to the Greeks as long as Palmyra marries him. She agrees and is cursed as a traitor by her father. The marriage doesn’t happen for various reasons and Palmyra flees to the camp of the once again revolting Greeks. When they are defeated for a second time she commits suicide rather than submitting to Mahomet.
I’ve just been listening to Revive; a new recital disk from Elina Garanča. It marks her move into more dramatic territory as she enters her fifth decade. It also says quite a lot about how she wants to develop her career. There’s a very personal introductory essay titled Strong Women in Moments of Weakness and it seems to me that she’s looking to find her place in the 19th century French/Italian romantic/verismo repertoire as opposed to, say, Strauss or Wagner. Certainly the pieces on the disk represent roles like Eboli, Didon, Delila and Hérodiade, as well as some more obscure stuff like Musette from the Leoncavallo La Bohème and Anne from Saint-Saëns Henry VIII.
operaramblings 