George Loomis at The New Criterion:
The Rossini scholar Philip Gossett pronounced Maometto II “one of the greatest serious operas written during the 19th century.” Modern productions were seen in Venice in 2005, Santa Fe in 2012, Naples in 2023, and elsewhere. By contrast, Le siège has remained the province of Pesaro, where it was given in 2017 in a new critical edition by the musicologist Damien Colas, as well as this year. (L’assedio di Corinto, a bastardized Italian-language mix of elements from Maometto and Le siège,was performed at La Scala in 1969 and at the Metropolitan Opera in 1975. It included for the soprano Beverly Sills a spectacular aria inserted in Act III, composed by Rossini’s contemporary Giovanni Pacini.)
In Le siège, Maometto II’s structural audacities were smoothed over by Rossini’s revisions, which were largely intended to bring it in line with French practice. At least, that is how the process began, as Colas explains in an article in the festival’s program book that gives Le siège its due. Building on work by the musicologist Anselm Gerhard, Colas explores in detail how the librettists of Le siège, including the poet Alexandre Soumet, broadened the opera to connect it with the Greek War of Independence, as the French were hugely supportive of the Greeks.
more here.
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