Bianca e Falliero
Encyclopedia
Bianca e Falliero, ossia Il consiglio dei tre (Bianca and Falliero, or The Counsel of Three) is a two-act opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...

tic melodramma
Melodramma
Melodramma is an Italian term for opera, used in a much narrower sense by English writers to discuss developments in the early 19th century Italian libretto...

by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...

 libretto
Libretto
A libretto is the text used in an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata, or musical. The term "libretto" is also sometimes used to refer to the text of major liturgical works, such as mass, requiem, and sacred cantata, or even the story line of a...

 by Felice Romani
Felice Romani
Felice Romani was an Italian poet and scholar of literature and mythology who wrote many librettos for the opera composers Donizetti and Bellini. Romani was considered the finest Italian librettist between Metastasio and Boito.-Biography:Born Giuseppe Felice Romani to a bourgeois family in Genoa,...

. The libretto was based on Antoine-Vincent Arnault
Antoine-Vincent Arnault
Antoine-Vincent Arnault was a French dramatist.Arnault was born in Paris. His first play, Marius à Minturne , immediately established his reputation. A year later he followed with a second republican tragedy, Lucrèce. Arnault left France during the Reign of Terror, but on his return, he was...

's play Les Vénitiens, ou Blanche et Montcassin.

Performance history

The opera premiered on December 26, 1819 at La Scala
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...

. Giuseppe Fioravanti
Giuseppe Fioravanti
Giuseppe Fioravanti was an Italian opera singer active during the first half of the 19th century. Although one of the most important and popular basso buffos of his generation, there is only a relatively small amount of information available about his life...

, a popular basso buffo of the day and the son of composer Valentino Fioravanti
Valentino Fioravanti
Valentino Fioravanti was a celebrated Italian composer of opera buffas.One of the best opera buffa composers between Domenico Cimarosa and Gioacchino Rossini. He was especially popular in Naples, and was the first in Italy to introduce spoken dialogue in the French manner in his works, sometimes...

, sang in the premiere. Carolina Bassi Manna, Italian contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

 considered one of the best in her day, also created a role in this opera.

The work was performed thirty times during the initial season in Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 and was performed throughout Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 and elsewhere to some extent before largely disappearing into obscurity after 1846. It was revived at the Rossini Opera Festival
Rossini Opera Festival
The Rossini Opera Festival is an opera festival held in August of each year in Pesaro, Italy, the birthplace of the opera composer Gioachino Rossini....

 in Pesaro
Pesaro
Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206....

 in 1986 with Katia Ricciarelli
Katia Ricciarelli
-Biography:Born at Rovigo, Veneto, to a very poor family, she struggled during her younger years when she studied music.She studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, won several vocal competitions in 1968, and made her professional debut as Mimì in La bohème in Mantua in 1969,...

, Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages....

, and Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt is an opera singer. He studied piano, singing, dance and drama at Oklahoma City University where he made his first stage appearance in Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann in a university production. At age 21, he was accepted into the summer season Apprentice Program for...

.

The opera is considered very difficult to sing due to the intensity of its coloratura
Coloratura
Coloratura has several meanings. The word is originally from Italian, literally meaning "coloring", and derives from the Latin word colorare . When used in English, the term specifically refers to elaborate melody, particularly in vocal music and especially in operatic singing of the 18th and...

 writing.

Roles

Role Voice type Premiere Cast, December 26, 1819
(Conductors: Gioacchino Rossini
and Alessandro Rolla)
Bianca, daughter of Contareno soprano
Soprano
A soprano is a voice type with a vocal range from approximately middle C to "high A" in choral music, or to "soprano C" or higher in operatic music. In four-part chorale style harmony, the soprano takes the highest part, which usually encompasses the melody...

Violante Camporesi
Capellio, Senator bass Giuseppe Fioravanti
Giuseppe Fioravanti
Giuseppe Fioravanti was an Italian opera singer active during the first half of the 19th century. Although one of the most important and popular basso buffos of his generation, there is only a relatively small amount of information available about his life...

Contareno, Senator tenor
Tenor
The tenor is a type of male singing voice and is the highest male voice within the modal register. The typical tenor voice lies between C3, the C one octave below middle C, to the A above middle C in choral music, and up to high C in solo work. The low extreme for tenors is roughly B2...

Claudio Bonoldi
Costanza, nurse of Bianca soprano Adelaide Ghinzani
Falliero, Venetian general contralto
Contralto
Contralto is the deepest female classical singing voice, with the lowest tessitura, falling between tenor and mezzo-soprano. It typically ranges between the F below middle C to the second G above middle C , although at the extremes some voices can reach the E below middle C or the second B above...

Carolina Bassi-Manna
Priuli, Doge of Venice bass Alessandro De Angeli
Pisani tenor Francesco Antonio Biscottini
Loredano, Senator spoken role
Senators, noblemen and women, bailiffs, soldiers, servants

Synopsis

Bianca e Falliero is a tale of emotional excess and bitter strife within war-threatened Venice. Falliero, the hero, comes home after defeating the enemies of Venice only to find his beloved Bianca promised to a rival and soon to be married.
Place: Venice
Time: 17th Century

Act 1

Contareno offers his daughter Bianca in marriage to Capellio, a member of a rival clan, in an act of conciliation meant to end a long-standing family feud. Bianca, however, loves Falliero, rumoured to have recently died defending Venice from a military threat. She sings of her love for the young general in the cavatina
Cavatina
Cavatina is a musical term, originally a short song of simple character, without a second strain or any repetition of the air...

 Della rosa il bel vermiglio. When Falliero returns from the war and Bianca rebels against her father's plan for her, Contareno threatens to ruin Falliero. The wedding ceremony begins, but Bianca refuses to marry Capellio by not signing the marriage certificate. Falliero bursts onto the scene.

Act 2

Falliero is forced to run from the scene of the wedding to escape the wrath of Bianca's father. Bianca again refuses to continue the ceremony. News arrives that Falliero has been captured and must stand trial for treason, allegedly for his contacts with a foreign power because he was found hiding in the Spanish Embassy. Unfortunately for him, his judges are to be the Council of Three: Contareno, Capellio and Loredano. Although Falliero does not defend his actions, Bianca passionately argues on his behalf. Eventually, Bianca's impassioned pleas convince Capellio that the two lovers belong together. All ends happily.

Recycled and reused music

The quartet
Quartet
In music, a quartet is a method of instrumentation , used to perform a musical composition, and consisting of four parts.-Western art music:...

 during the trial scene, Cielo, il mio labbro ispira, was reworked several times by Rossini over the years, and its popularity eventually outlasted that of the opera itself. The critic Stendhal
Stendhal
Marie-Henri Beyle , better known by his pen name Stendhal, was a 19th-century French writer. Known for his acute analysis of his characters' psychology, he is considered one of the earliest and foremost practitioners of realism in his two novels Le Rouge et le Noir and La Chartreuse de Parme...

 considered this quartet to be one of Rossini's finest creations.
The composer reused music from the rondo
Rondo
Rondo, and its French equivalent rondeau, is a word that has been used in music in a number of ways, most often in reference to a musical form, but also to a character-type that is distinct from the form...

 finale of his recent, well-received opera, La donna del lago
La donna del lago
La donna del lago is an opera by Gioachino Rossini with a libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, based on The Lady of the Lake, a poem by Sir Walter Scott.This opera was the first to be based on Scott's romantic works...

in this work as well.

Recordings

Year Cast:
Bianca, Fallerio, Contareno, Capellio
Conductor,
Opera House and Orchestra
Label
1986 Katia Ricciarelli
Katia Ricciarelli
-Biography:Born at Rovigo, Veneto, to a very poor family, she struggled during her younger years when she studied music.She studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory in Venice, won several vocal competitions in 1968, and made her professional debut as Mimì in La bohème in Mantua in 1969,...

,
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne
Marilyn Horne is an American mezzo-soprano opera singer. She specialized in roles requiring a large sound, beauty of tone, excellent breath support, and the ability to execute difficult coloratura passages....

.
Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt
Chris Merritt is an opera singer. He studied piano, singing, dance and drama at Oklahoma City University where he made his first stage appearance in Jacques Offenbach's Les contes d'Hoffmann in a university production. At age 21, he was accepted into the summer season Apprentice Program for...

,
Giorgio Surjan
Donato Renzetti,
London Sinfonietta Opera Orchestra and Prague Philharmonic Choir
(Audio and video recordings of a performance (or of performances) at the Rossini Opera Festival
Rossini Opera Festival
The Rossini Opera Festival is an opera festival held in August of each year in Pesaro, Italy, the birthplace of the opera composer Gioachino Rossini....

)
Audio CD: Legato Classics
Cat: LCD 138-3
DVD: House of Opera
DVDCC 246
2005 Maria Bayo,
Daniela Barcellona,
Francesco Meli,
Carlo Lepore.
Renato Palumbo,
Orquesta Sinfónica de Galicia and the Prague chamber Choir
(Audio recording of a performance at the Rossini Opera Festival, August)
Audio CD: Dynamic
CDS 501/1-3
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