Rossini wrote this at the age of thirty-six, and even though he was at the height of his popularity and even though he lived another forty-odd years after that, he never wrote another opera. I gather he may have been suffering from mental illness, though he did rally and wrote some more music towards the end of his life.
Yeah, the one thing you know from this is the overture, or more accurately, the last two or three minutes of the overture. There's a lot of it that would be unrecognizable to you if you only know the doodoodoo doodoo doodoodoo doodoo, doodoodoo doodoo doodoodoo doodoo, doodoodoo doodoo doodoodoo doodoo, doo DOOOOO doodoodoodoo part. WOW trying to write out music phonetically like that DOES NOT WORK. You do have to wonder, though: did Rossini have any inkling at the time that he was writing one of the most iconic pieces of music ever? And it also makes me wonder, in a stoned-college-student kind of way: if he hadn't written it, would it still exist in potentia? It just seems unthinkable that this music shouldn't exist in some way. Duuuuuude. Of course, that raises even thornier philosophical questions, such as: if the William Tell Overture was inevitable, was "Two Princes" by the Spin Doctors likewise? That's a dark road to go down. Doesn't bear thinking about.
Well, anyway, that is a piece that goes on for several minutes; this is a three-and-a-half-hour opera, so obviously there has to be more to it? So what's it about? If someone had asked me that before I saw it, I'd've only been able to stammer out something vague about a guy shooting an apple off his kid's head? Or something? That is a thing that happens here, but it's not the entire thrust of the narrative. A long opera that was JUST about a single incident would seem positively avant-garde.
Well, what it's about is that the mean Austrians (all those goddamn Viennese waltzes I get SO MAD just thinking about it), led by the brutal Gesler, are oppressing the proud Swiss people, including ol' Billy Tell and his wife and son. So they're sad about that. Another Swiss guy, Arnold, is conflicted, because he's in love with an Austrian princess so he's going to fight for Austria but then his father is murdered by the Austrians what's he gonna DO?!? Anyway, Tell is captured and the sadistic Austrians make him shoot an apple on his son's head but he succeeds and escapes and murders Gesler and the princess decides to be on the Swiss side (it's extremely unclear how this works politically), so Arnold isn't conflicted anymore and...well, it wasn't clear to me quite whether they're actually supposed to have achieved liberty or whether they're just going to continue the glorious struggle, but at any rate, it's all very triumphant.
This is the first Rossini opera I've seen that isn't a goofy comedy. I don't think it's peformed that often (but then again, is any Rossini aside from Barbiere and maybe Cenerentola?), but...it should be, because it's pretty much all you could want. I find it sort of funny that it's an opera in French by an Italian about Swiss patriotism, but it's all good. I saw a Royal Opera House performance starring Gerald Finley; he's done all kinds of standard repertoire work, but for whatever reason I'd only seen him in contemporary operas, as the sleazy lawyer in Anna Nicoleand Robert Oppenheimer in Doctor Atomic. I liked seeing him in a "normal" opera. He's good! I hope I will again! The production itself was a bit confusing, with everyone in twentieth-century dress (with the bad guys, perhaps inevitably, in nazi-recalling costumes) and one silent guy dressed in a traditional William-Tell-esque get-up meant, apparently, to symbolize the, you know, Swiss spirit or whatnot. I got used to it quickly enough; it was fine. Perform it more often, I say!
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