A rare opportunity to hear Rossini’s “Ory” in Italian. December 4 and 6, 2025

Ory in Italian? After the flurry of recent performances of Le Comte Ory in the original French one might be surprised that the opera was commonly performed in Italian in Italy for many years. There are some who prefer William Tell performed in Italian ( others feel this is scandalous) so why not give Il Conte Ory a listen? Rossini fans in the greater Cambridge MA area ( or even further afar) will have the oportunity to hear it, performed for a very select audience ( due to venue size) by a troupe of intrepid opera amateurs who in their professional lives work in fields such as biology, engineering and other non-musical fields. Its name? Pico Opera!

Pico Opera was founded in 2023 and is a company of young artists affiliated with MIT. They consist of both professional and amateur musicians, with special dedication to fostering inclusive opportunities for the MIT community. They welcome talented singers in the greater Boston area, as well as MIT affiliates, with MIT affiliates in particular coming from different levels of experience. Their performances have featured artists from a variety of local universities, including MIT, Harvard, the Boston Conservatory, Longy, Boston University and Wellesley.

One of their innovations is to provide opportunities for each member of the company, including their ensemble, to shine as soloists and to develop their skills in a positive environment. They do this by means of what is known as Pico Scenes where an aria not from the opera performed is incorporated at an appropriate musical and dramatic point into the opera. “Outside music” is nothing new in opera ( think “trunk arias”) but the way Pico did it with their recent performances of L’elisir D’amore was really elegant and seamless.

Please visit their website picoopera.org asap to secure tickets and learn more about this joyful enterprise.

Thanks to the work of the Immortal Performances Recorded Music Society of Canada, we are now able to hear on CD, recordings remastered from original 78 rpm recordings of Toscanini conducting 4 Rossini overtures. The significance of these recordings should be apparent to those trying to understand both performance history and the traditions passed down from Rossini’s time.

Toscanini, apparently felt that Rossini was a significant composer ( the booklet notes expand on this) and recorded the overtures to Cenerentola, Barbiere, L’Italiana, and Semiramide.

Toascanini conducted large orchestras with instruments not necessarily like those for which these works were composed. The program notes do not mention which scores he had at his disposal, something that might be of interest  as critical editions weren’t an issue in that era.

But bearing in mind that Verdi surely knew what Rossini’s performances sounded like ( or should have), and that Toscanini actually played in an orchestra conducted by  Verdi  ( though  not Rossini of course ) there is something quite remarkable in this addition to our understanding of Rossini.

The famous “pulse” that the late Alberto Zedda often spoke about is there in all its glory. And although liberties are taken with tempos here and there, the energy which is at the heart at of Rossini’s overtures is there in all its glory.

This enterprise by Immortal Performances is worth the support of all Rossini lovers and to learn more about their work ( not restricted to Rossini) please visit their website : www.immortalperforances.org and consider supporting their work.

Jakob Lehmann, known to Rossini lovers for his exquisite recording of L’Italiana in Algeri, and his superb conducting for Teatro Nuovo, makes a case in this video for Rossini’s global impact which surpassed Mozart’s at the time. Of course Rossini had some exceptional singers at his disposal, but what is often forgotten is that there Rossini was pushing the boundary with the orchestra as well. Modern orchestras tend to blur this quality and Lehmann makes a great argument for examining the role of the orchestra and the types of instruments that were used that the time.

From the Youtube notes:

Conductor Jakob Lehmann makes his London debut with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestre Révolutionnaire et Romantique on 2 October 2025, launching a new series dedicated to exploring the music of Gioachino Rossini on period instruments. In this video, Lehmann discusses Rossini’s place as one of the most successful composers of his time, his distinctive style, and the impact of performing his works in historically informed contexts, as well as his own journey into music and his first collaboration with the Monteverdi Choir and Orchestras. The programme features two contrasting works: excerpts from Rossini’s opera Ermione (1819), a rarely performed drama set after the Trojan War, and the Stabat Mater (1841), one of the composer’s major sacred works.