The Works of Gioachino Rossini in the Context of the Risorgimento

The subject of this study is the work of the composer Gioachino Rossini in the context of the era of the unification of the Italian state. Special attention is paid to the analysis of his operas in the opera-seria genre, based on mythological, biblical and historical plots. These opuses semantically trace the moods and motives of the struggle of the Italian people to gain their independence. The author sets himself the goal of identifying in the composer's operatic heritage a national-patriotic subtext characteristic of the conjuncture of the period under consideration. The main source is the libretto for opera productions. An important source is the recollections of spectators of Rossini's opera productions, which help to evaluate the interpretation by contemporaries of the national liberation motives embedded in the music. The scientific novelty of the study lies in the fact that for the first time in Russian historiography, a detailed analysis of a number of opera works by Gioachino Rossini was carried out in order to identify revolutionary-patriotic pathos in them. The results of the study showed that Rossini's commitment to the ideas of the Italian liberation struggle was reflected even at an early stage of his work. The theme of the pride of the Italian people and their desire to free themselves from Austrian oppression developed dynamically throughout a number of the composer's iconic operas and took various forms: comic in the opera "Italian Woman in Algeri", biblical and mythological in the operas "Cyrus in Babylon" and "Moses in Egypt", chivalrous and sublime in "Tancrede" and "William Tell". Gioachino Rossini succeeded in laying the tradition of national Italian opera, preparing the ground for the subsequent generation of Italian composers of the Risorgimento era, the most prominent representative of which was Giuseppe Verdi.