Voice & Piano | Rossini – Maometto II (Giusto ciel, in tal periglio)

Rossini Gioachino – Maometto II (Giusto ciel, in tal periglio)
Aria “Juste Ciel!” (from the opera ‘Le siège de Corinthe’)

The French version of this late Rossini opera was a partial rewrite of the composer’s 1820 Italian opera, Maometto II, but with exactly the same story and characters, in the setting of the Turks’ 1470 conquest of the Venetian colony of Negroponte. That original version had premiered in Naples on 3 December 1820 – six years before the Missolonghi siege and massacre. The original Maometto was not well received, neither in Naples nor in Venice where Rossini tried out a somewhat revised version in 1823, this time with a happy ending using music from his own La donna del lago at the conclusion.

But in 1826, two years after settling in Paris, Rossini tried yet again, with yet another version (which included two ballets, as called for by French operatic tradition), transplanted it to the Peloponnese with the new title Le siège de Corinthe in a topical nod to the then-raging Greek war for independence from the Ottomans, and translated it into French. This time, Rossini succeeded, and the opera was performed in various countries over the next decade or so.

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Giusto ciel, in tal periglio (guitar)