ROSSINI VISITS ROME--TORVALDO E DORLISKA.
After the success of "Elisabetta," Rossini went to Rome, where he was
engaged to write two works for the carnival of 1816. On the 26th of
December, 1815, he produced at the Teatro Valle, "Torvaldo e Dorliska;"
composed for Remorini and Galli, the two best bass singers of the day,
Donzelli, the celebrated tenor, and Madame Sala, a prima donna of great
reputation, who, it is interesting to know, was the mother of our
distinguished author and journalist, Mr. George Augustus Sala.
But though the singers were excellent, the orchestra was composed of
very indifferent musicians, most of whom were workmen and petty
shopkeepers engaged during the day in the pursuit of their trade. The
first clarinet was a barber, who habitually shaved Rossini. In proof of
the composer's admirable presence of mind, it is narrated that, annoyed
and irritated as he was at the rehearsals by the inability of the band
to execute his music correctly, he never once said a severe thing to the
first clarinet. He remonstrated with him very gently the next morning
after the operation of shaving had been safely performed.
Altogether it is not astonishing that the opera was received rather
coldly, or at least not with sufficient warmth to satisfy Rossini. On
"Sigismondo" being hissed at Venice, Rossini had sent his mother a
drawing of a _fiasco_; this time he forwarded her a sketch of a little
bottle or _fiaschetto_.
"Torvaldo e Dorliska," however, must have been an opera of some mark
even among the operas of Rossini. It was received at Paris, in 1825, for
the début of Mademoiselle Marietta Garcia, the future Malibran, and the
composer borrowed from it the motive of the magnificent letter duet in
"Otello." The moderate success of the work is partly to be explained by
the poorness of the libretto--the production, however, of a man who,
immediately afterwards, furnished Rossini with one of the best opera
books ever written.
"Torvaldo e Dorliska" and "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" were produced
simultaneously; and the little attention paid to the former, may partly
no doubt be explained by the immense, though not in the first instance
uncontested, success of the latter.