Gioachino Rossini, Ricciardo e Zoraide (1818)

Here's this. It's based on an episode from an extremely unknown epic poem called Il Ricciardetto by a guy called Niccolò Forteguerri, who doesn't even have an Italian wikipedia page. There's an English translation of...the first canto, which seems inadequate. Well. Anyway. It seems to be sorta-kind in the same family as Orlando Furioso and Gerusalemme liberata but not exactly. Not familiar character names.

Anyway, the idea is that Ricciardo is a Christian knight, but his sweetheart Zoraide has been captured by those perfidious Nubians, and the Nubian king, Agorante (is this name a variation on the Carolingian Agramante?), is in love with her (in spite of already being married). Ricciardo infiltrates the Nubian palace in disguise, but he's caught. Zoraide's father Ircano tries to save them but fails. But then everyone is rescued by some Christian knights who were just hanging around, I guess. Agorante is spared, and now Ircano no longer objects to his daughter marrying Ricciardo. If you want to know why he objected to this in the first place, you should PROBABLY bloody well read Forteguerri, shouldn't you? Yeah, the fact that this is based on a work that's basically completely unknown today does not do it any favors, and parts of it are a bit hard to follow.

It's kind of a non-comic version of L'italiana in Algeri with a bit of Die Entführung aus dem Serail thrown in, innit? Nothing wrong with that. I chose this one out of all the available Rossini operas (which is most or all of them) mainly on the basis of the casting: the title characters are played by Juan Diego Flórez and Pretty Yende, both of whom I like. You can see Flórez in hell of Met Live in HD productions; Yende is less established, but she was great in L'elisir d'amore and I wish to see her more (also, can you tell from my frequent use of "hell of" that I'm rereading Achewood lately?).

Really, how are you not going to like it? I will believe that there is a bad Rossini opera when I see it. That said, I have to admit that it perhaps wasn't quite as great as I was hoping for. Don't get me wrong, there are a number of memorable bel canto flourishes, but I also couldn't help but feel that it dragged on a bit, with not much really happening. Of course, this in no way dims my desire to see every Rossini opera.