The Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini and Self-Borrowing

Abstract

Self-borrowing and Rossini: music theatre scholars are well acquainted with this topic. Many publications have been dedicated to it, most of which concentrate on compositional-analytic aspects, the artistic and communicational nature of self-borrowing and its reception in nineteenth-century periodicals. At present, however, no study has attempted to question the relation between Rossini's self-borrowings and the critical edition of his works. This is the issue to which this contribution is dedicated.

Beginning with the operating indications summarized by the editorial criteria provided for the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini – first published in 1974, and revised and updated in 2015 – this study compares the various methodological approaches adopted while preparing critical editions and dealing with the specific features of each passage in which self-borrowing appears. This comparison furthermore allows us to formulate a general overview of the entire editorial undertaking. This in turn will give us a glimpse of how principles such as the autograph's centrality and concepts such as authenticity and originality have often become problematic and have been put into question. Knowing that Rossini often rewrote the pieces he self-borrowed is fundamental for philologists working on the critical edition of his works. Decoding the modus operandi Rossini adopted in each case of self-borrowing is therefore equally important, and can help choose the sources closest to Rossini's idea of the self-borrowed pieces at the time of their reuse.

Self-borrowing and Rossini: music theatre scholars and opera lovers alike are well acquainted with this topic. For the latter, more often than not, it involves little more than a sort of quiz that requires them to dutifully list as many cases as possible in which Rossini repeatedly used the same musical material. For the former, on the contrary, it has offered considerable food for thought, with most of their reflections focusing on purely compositional-analytical issues. Self-borrowing has indeed been described and studied as one of Rossini's foremost ‘compositional methods’;¹ research has been done on the constants and variables in its use, with inquiries into both operas in which this practice is overriding (Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra and Eduardo e Cristina) and single pieces (such as the Cabaletta ‘Voce che tenera’), aimed at studying how exactly the music migrated from one score to the other.² Nor has there been a lack of broader studies which, in addition to offering a general overview of self-borrowing in early-nineteenth century Italian opera, emphasize its nature as an artistic-communicational resource and its reception in periodicals of the time.³

While these are the general lines of inquiry, no study has attempted to investigate the relation between Rossini's self-borrowings and the critical edition of his works, the issue to which this article is dedicated.⁴ The Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini still has a fairly short history. Officially inaugurated in 1979, when its first volume (La gazza ladra) was published,⁵ this series is the oldest critical edition dedicated to nineteenth-century Italian opera. It has therefore had the honour, as well as the responsibility, of providing a methodological model for all the similar editorial initiatives that appeared in the following years.⁶ Promoted by Fondazione Rossini (Pesaro) in collaboration with Casa Ricordi (Milan), the edition was preceded in 1974 by an important ‘prologue’: the publication of its underlying editorial criteria in the Bollettino del Centro rossiniano di studi.⁷ In 2015, these criteria were revised and updated, giving particular attention to a balance between maintaining the founding principles and introducing the newer practices that years of editorial activity and consequent theoretical reflection had made necessary.⁸ The term ‘self-borrowing’ is not present in either the 1974 or the 2015 criteria. And yet, in the 2015 update some mention is made of how self-borrowings are to be editorially treated. Among the guidelines concerning how to choose among and deal with the sources for each edition, the following appears:

Pieces from the original operas, even in cases where an autograph score is lacking for the opera to which they were transferred, will not as a rule be taken as the primary text; they may be of help in cases in which an editorial integration is required. The same holds true for pieces taken by Rossini from a work of which the autograph has not come down to us.⁹

Although not prescriptive – the expression ‘not as a rule' indeed leaves some room for freedom, as is necessary in particularly complex cases – these guidelines emphasize the need to avoid as much as possible the use of sources belonging to different textual traditions. In the particular case of self-borrowings, the possibility that autograph sources are available only for the original or final pieces is also not to be considered as sufficient in itself to authorize sic et simpliciter a collation between sources coming from different operas. This latter procedure must always be carried out with great caution, in order to avoid hastily overlapping readings coming from different works.

In order to better understand the reasons behind the formulation of these indications, I believe that a few remarks containing a brief contextualization of Rossini's use of self-borrowing technique would be helpful. The degree to which previously composed musical material is reused obviously varies from one opera to the next; in some cases the amount of self-borrowing is virtually negligible, while in others it comes close to covering the entirety of the music in the opera. Additionally, Rossini's self-borrowings can be more or less pervasive, depending on whether he chose to take up no more than a rhythmic-melodic formula (cadential or otherwise), the complete profile of a theme, or one or more sections of a musical number (more or less literally repeating themes, harmonic outlines and accompaniment formulas) including (or not) the same verbal text. As Marco Beghelli has recently observed,

with Rossini, the concept of reuse is only appropriate in a few instances: for example, the Sinfonia of La gazzetta, which appears in exactly the same form in La Cenerentola, or the one from Tancredi, which was taken from La pietra del paragone … Put briefly, whether we are dealing with simple orchestral materials or an entire musical number, Rossini generally took the pains to provide a new instrumentation, almost as though he was quoting himself by heart, or consciously refined a few details with respect to the previous case. Even in extremely urgent situations, he did not abandon this inclination: while the main vocal and instrumental lines may remain similar, the orchestral writing quite often takes on a different quality, the inner counterpoints are elaborated differently and the phrasing is modified … Even the formal structure can be extended or reduced by a few bars when an entire musical number is transferred, while if only the thematic material is recuperated, its development can follow paths that at times are quite different.¹⁰

These observations are extremely valuable for a philologist at work on the critical edition of Rossini's works. Indeed, they fully clarify and justify the guideline found in the 2015 editorial criteria, which recommends against using pieces from the original operas as the primary text for an edition, even in cases where the autograph score is lacking in the opera to which they were transferred.¹¹ The search for the written formulation closest to the composer's conception of a piece at a particular moment in its history must therefore be illuminated by a historical perspective. In the very particular area of self-borrowings, the original autograph may reflect more or less faithfully the idea the composer had of it at the time when it was recovered in another opera. In this sense, the amount of rewriting and reworking to which the composer subjected the self-borrowed piece at the moment of its reuse is crucial. The degree to which the original piece was reworked is in fact inversely proportionate to the idea that the original autograph represents the composer's conception of the piece at the time it was included in the new opera. Decoding the modus operandi Rossini adopted with regard to each individual case of self-borrowing is therefore fundamental and can help an editor in choosing the main source.

In this article, I therefore propose a chronological summary of the Rossini critical editions available to date. This will allow me to show how the editors of the individual volumes dealt with some particular cases of self-borrowing. My discussion will be divided into two parts, followed by some concluding remarks. In the first part, I will present a number of examples taken from editions that were completed between 1979 and 2014, whereas in the second part I will discuss and comment on some emblematic cases taken from critical editions published from 2015 onwards. For each example, the methodologies adopted and the editorial results achieved will be brought to light. This overview will show how the recommendation provided in the 2015 editorial criteria – not to employ sources coming from different textual traditions – derives from editorial strategies adopted over the previous years. Lastly, an analysis of the cases presented will allow us to take a broader look at this entire editorial undertaking. The examples proposed will demonstrate that principles such as the centrality of the autograph or the distinction between primary and secondary sources, previously discussed by Patricia B. Brauner,¹² and concepts such as authenticity and originality, have indeed become more problematic, above all in the highly particular area of critical editions of self-borrowings.

1979 to 2014

This first part will examine a number of instances of pieces containing self-borrowing that appeared in the volumes published between 1979 and 2014. The examples discussed below will be divided into two groups, which adopt different methodological approaches. The first group includes cases in which no autograph source for the final piece exists, making the editors turn to the autograph of the original piece as the main source. In the second group, two cases will be presented in which, once again because an autograph for the final piece is lacking, several sources (autograph and non-autograph) were simultaneously employed to determine the text of the critical edition. For each of the examples presented, the editorial results will then be brought to light, including their strong differences even within each of the two groups.

Editing Based on the Autograph of Another Opera

In the first group, three examples from the critical editions of La gazza ladra, La Cenerentola and Zelmira will be discussed. What brings them together is the editors’ choice to base their work on the autograph of the source piece, since for the final piece no autograph is available, but only copyists’ drafts.

The first example comes from the oldest volume of the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini: La gazza ladra, edited by Alberto Zedda. This opera, first staged in Milan (Teatro alla Scala) on 31 May 1817, was reworked several times by Rossini himself for subsequent productions. For the June 1818 Pesaro staging, to which Rossini dedicated great (and almost maniacal) care, he introduced a Cavatina for Fernando into the opera (No. 5bis Cavatina Fernando ‘Dunque invano i perigli e la morte’ in the critical edition edited by Alberto Zedda), thus meeting the requests of Ranieri Remorini, the interpreter chosen for the part. However, Rossini did not compose a piece ex novo, turning instead to self-borrowing and taking up the Cavatina sung by the Duca d'Ordow from the Introduzione of Torvaldo e Dorliska (an opera premiered in Rome, at the Teatro Valle, on 26 December 1815). In the critical commentary to No. 5bis of La gazza ladra, we read that:

An autograph score of this added piece is not available, but various copies pertaining to La gazza ladra have been conserved, in addition, naturally, to the autograph score of Torvaldo.

A collation between these sources reveals that no changes were made to the piece while being reworked, except for the words of the text and the added cadenzas. The primary source for this edition is therefore the autograph score of Torvaldo e Dorliska, as regards bars 1–59, while for the words and the last ten bars ePR ¹³ was chosen, since it contains a greater amount of interpretational indications, with critical integrations coming from other sources.¹⁴

Alberto Zedda and the editorial committee, chaired at the time by Philip Gossett, on this occasion therefore decided to use a piece from another opera as the principal source. This choice was motivated by the two pieces being presumably identical (with the exception of the final ten bars and the text, for which this edition indeed turns to a different main source). In some instances, this led parts of the autograph score of Torvaldo to be included, even though they have no apparent links with the textual tradition of La gazza ladra. This is the case, for example, with the two vocal cadenzas between the first and the second beat of bars 22 (Ex. 1) and 48 (Ex. 2). At bar 22, no source for La gazza ladra calls for a cadenza; at bar 48 only a few maintain one, but in a different reading with respect to the one found in Torvaldo (Ex. 3).

Ex. 1 La gazza ladra (critical edition edited by Alberto Zedda), bar 22, Fernando

Ex. 2 La gazza ladra (critical edition edited by Alberto Zedda), bar 48, Fernando

Ex. 3 Manuscript (full score) of ‘Dunque invano i perigli e la morte’ for La gazza ladra, Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, shelf mark: ML 510/12, bar 48, Fernando

In both cases, this edition features the cadenzas from Torvaldo e Dorliska in the main text (with no typographical differentiation), relegating the reading that appears in the sources for La gazza ladra to a note in the critical commentary.¹⁵ Even though other sources were available for La gazza ladra, the version in the composer's own hand, while written almost three years earlier and for another opera, was preferred to the one found in the copies of the opera being edited. The different conclusion of the two pieces also allows us to maintain that Rossini, in reworking the Cavatina of Torvaldo e Dorliska, recomposed it and formalized his idea of the piece when he included it in La gazza ladra in a new written text. The autograph version of Torvaldo is therefore not the source that most closely resembles the composer's conception of the piece when he reused it, and the sources for La gazza ladra, even though they are not autograph, can probably help us to better understand this idea.

In addition to this example, one can note a similar approach that however produced different results in the editor's way of dealing with No. 5a, Recitativo e Cavatina Pippo, ‘Beviam, tocchiamo a gara’, a piece added for the 1819 Naples staging, once again under Rossini's supervision.¹⁶ This Cavatina is derived from No. 2 Aria Siveno ‘Pien di contento in seno’ from Demetrio e Polibio, Rossini's first opera (composed in Bologna between 1808 and 1811;¹⁷ premiere: Rome, Teatro Valle, 18 May 1812), of which the autograph score has not come down to us. In this case, a copy of La gazza ladra was inevitably chosen as the principal source for the edition (hence, not the original piece but the final one). In the critical commentary, however, the following remarks appear: ‘the autograph score of Demetrio e Polibio, from which the Cavatina is derived, would provide a primary source, but has not as yet been found’.¹⁸ If an autograph source had been available, it would once again have been used, due to its recognized authority. This autograph, while pertaining to a different opera, was perceived as the most trustworthy carriers of the composer's authentic thought, even though it was expressed over ten years before their contingent use.

The second example in this group of pieces comes from the critical edition of La Cenerentola edited by Alberto Zedda, and concerns the Sinfonia. For this piece, Rossini retrieved the Sinfonia of La gazzetta (Naples, Teatro dei Fiorentini, 26 September 1816). The transition from one opera to the other was almost certainly based on a copy of the Sinfonia of La gazzetta commissioned in Naples by Rossini; the composer brought it to Rome with a view to including the piece in La Cenerentola (premiered in Rome, Teatro Valle, 25 January 1817). However, there is no trace of this manuscript in the autograph of La Cenerentola, which begins with a non-autograph bifolio containing only the bass part of the Sinfonia.¹⁹ In this case, the original piece was almost completely reused, and the choice of the main source could thus only fall upon the autograph for La gazzetta. The latter is simply the oldest source for the Sinfonia of La Cenerentola, whose textual tradition is the same as the piece in La gazzetta from which it originated.

The third and final example concerns Zelmira (Naples, Teatro di San Carlo, 26 February 1822). The problem posed by self-borrowing during the editing process was addressed by the editors of the critical edition, Helen Greenwald and Kathleen Kuzmick Hansell, in determining the text of bars 52–224 of No. 10bis Aria Zelmira, a passage included in the opera by Rossini for the occasion of the 1826 Paris staging. The two editors adopted the autograph of the original opera, Ermione, as the main source for this portion of the text. Even though at least one manuscript copy of the new piece does exist, in this case a different choice could not have been made: Rossini, indeed, directly wrote in the autograph score of Ermione the changes required to adapt part of the Gran Scena of the original opera's protagonist to Zelmira.²⁰ The autograph of Ermione, as regards only the portion of text using self-borrowing, is thus the original nucleus of the textual tradition of the passage taken up in Zelmira. Its use as the main source for the final work not only does not give rise to textual contaminations, but also appears to be the best choice in order to restore a text as close as possible to the idea Rossini must have had of the passage at the time he recuperated it.

Editions that Simultaneously Use More than One Source

In the second group, two examples from the critical editions of Adina and the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono will be discussed. What brings them together is the choice made by their respective editors, due to the absence of a final autograph, to employ more than one source (autograph and non-autograph) when determining specific aspects of the text to be included in the critical edition. This choice, as we shall see, is justified by the modus operandi used by Rossini, who for the self-borrowed passages in these two works did not draft a complete new autograph. Instead, he wrote the necessary changes on loose sheets, leaving to his trusted copyists the task of assembling a complete score that included both the newly composed components and those derived from the original works.

The first case concerns three pieces found in Adina, the critical edition of which was prepared by Fabrizio Della Seta. This opera was created in unique circumstances:²¹ composed during 1818 at the request of an unknown patron and tailored to an equally unknown prima donna, Adina was intended for the Teatro São Carlos in Lisbon. Rossini prepared this opera in Italy and sent the score to Lisbon where, once again due to unknown circumstances, it was not staged. Not until eight years later (Lisbon, Teatro São Carlos, 10 June 1826) did the debut of Adina actually take place, without Rossini being informed. Not all of the music for Adina is by Rossini; moreover, not all the pieces certainly composed by Rossini were written ex novo for this opera. Of the nine pieces that make up Adina, only three (No. 1 Introduzione, No. 7 Quartetto, No. 9 Aria di Adina, e Finale) were composed by Rossini specifically for Adina. For a fourth piece (No. 2 Cavatina Adina), Rossini wrote only the so-called skeleton score, entrusting a collaborator with the task of orchestrating it; the same collaborator is entirely responsible for two other pieces (No. 4 Duetto Adina-Califfo and No. 5 Aria Califfo). The remaining three pieces (No. 3 Coro, No. 6 Scena e Aria Selimo and No. 8 Aria Alì), present in the autograph in the hand of a copyist, were derived from similar pieces found in Sigismondo (Venice, Teatro La Fenice, 26 December 1814), an opera which did not meet with success. The work required to adapt the old pieces was carried out on a few particelle, in which a copyist only set down the vocal lines, underneath which Rossini wrote the new verbal text in his own hand. A second copyist then drafted a complete score of the three pieces (which is now bound into the autograph score of Adina), transcribing rather inaccurately the instrumental parts from a copy of Sigismondo and the vocal ones from the partially autograph particelle mentioned above.²² In the transition from Sigismondo to Adina, Rossini therefore only reworked the vocal parts, leaving all the other components of the musical text untouched. Considering the particular state of the sources, for its musical text the critical edition turned to the autograph score of Sigismondo as its principal source, using the semi-autograph particelle only to define the verbal text. The copies found in the autograph score were therefore ‘demoted’ to the status of secondary sources.²³ Only in one single case was this modus operandi contradicted: for No. 6, Scena e Aria Selimo, the partially autograph vocal particella was not conserved (or, perhaps, it was never prepared). For this reason, the copy in the autograph score of Adina was given greater consideration and was used as the principal source in defining the verbal text of the piece.²⁴ As is clear from this description, the highly particular situation of the sources for Adina led an editorial strategy to be elaborated which, skilfully interweaving the sources of two different operas, defined a text that in all likelihood is quite close to the composer's original project.

A similar editorial strategy, but with different results, had been used previously for the critical edition of the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono, edited by Mauro Bucarelli. This Cantata, first performed in Rome on 1 January 1847, had been prepared by Rossini during the autumn of 1846; he himself defined it as a musical compilation,²⁵ since the five pieces that make it up come from previously written operas, as summarized in Table 1.

Table 1 Pieces in the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono and their origin

Rossini took up the pre-existing pieces and introduced a few changes in their structure and orchestration, in addition to revising the vocal lines, which were adapted to the new verbal text; he furthermore composed four new recitatives, adding them to the musical numbers. Rossini did not therefore limit himself to rewriting only the vocal parts, as in Adina, but more or less deeply revised the text of the original pieces. He then wrote his interventions in different sources (complete scores for the new recitatives and for the beginning of No. 5, particelle for the new vocal lines of Nos. 1, 2, 4, and a spartitino for the percussions in No. 4) which, along with the sources for the original operas (probably including the autographs for Armida and Ricciardo e Zoraide), he gave to a copyist tasked with preparing a complete draft of the Cantata to be sent to Rome for the performance. Before sending it, Rossini at least partially revised the manuscript written by the copyist, introducing corrections and specifying a few details.²⁶ This manuscript score is the only complete source currently known for the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono.²⁷ Faced with this situation, two editorial strategies could have been followed: greater weight could have been given to the sources directly linked to the Cantata (even though they are not all autograph), treating those from the original operas simply as secondary sources; or the largest possible number of autograph drafts available (of both the Cantata and the original operas) could have been perceived as the most authentic forms of Rossini's thought (even though they date to many years before their reuse in the Cantata). This latter option was chosen by the editor, as is stated in the edition itself:

Given that the Cantata is a compilation largely derived from pre-existing compositions, in this edition we have used NA [the manuscript copy drafted by the copyist] as the main source only in cases in which a source in Rossini's hand does not exist (whether prepared specifically for this Cantata, or pre-existing but used [by the copyist] to prepare the manuscript).²⁸

The critical edition of the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono therefore proposes a text established through a multi-layered and reasoned use of more than one source (whether autograph or not). Each source was only used to define one or more aspects of the text of the Cantata (overall structure, vocal parts, orchestral parts). The result of this complex interaction among sources is thus the text found in the critical edition, which is a conjectural text, the result of the collation of sources prepared by Rossini for different operas and at very distant moments. This text is different from the one that might have come close to the idea Rossini must have had of the Cantata in 1847 and that the copyist's manuscript draft at the basis of the first performance in Rome might perhaps have better represented.

After 2015

This section of the article presents three examples from critical editions of Rossini's works that appeared from 2015 onwards and thus followed the publication of the updated editorial criteria. In two cases (L'equivoco stravagante and Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra), the recommendation not to use sources belonging to different operas as the basic text for the edition was accepted. For a piece included as an appendix in the critical edition of La pietra del paragone, instead, it was not possible to follow the criteria. Let us therefore examine the three examples in detail.

The critical edition of L'equivoco stravagante, edited by Marco Beghelli and Stefano Piana, dates to 2015; this is – it may be helpful to recall – the first critical edition of an opera by Rossini of which the autograph score has not come down to us. The work involved in editing was thus based entirely on manuscript copies. L'equivoco stravagante (Bologna, Teatro del Corso, 26 October 1811) includes pieces that Rossini reused one year later in La pietra del paragone (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, 26 September 1812), which has come down to us in autograph form. The idea of using the autograph score of the latter opera in defining the text of the original one immediately comes up against one problem: the pieces shared by the two operas were completely reconceived by Rossini for their reuse in La pietra del paragone. The words written by Marco Beghelli are illuminating in this sense:

One can however in no way speak of a mechanical transfer, and only a few echoes remain of the words written by Gasbarri [the librettist of L'equivoco Stravagante]. Musically speaking as well, whether the recovery of the pre-existing music concerns a brief passage or an entire piece, we are always faced with instances of rewriting …: the phrasing is sometimes elaborated differently, the orchestration of the inner parts is often modified and even the formal structure became at times longer or shorter by a few bars.²⁹

In L'equivoco stravagante, the autograph score of La pietra del paragone may prove to be useful as a reference source for a few dubious details.³⁰ Rossini, when going from L'equivoco stravagante to La pietra del paragone, thoroughly recomposed the self-borrowed pieces, and knowing this is thus precisely what motivated the editors to give the autograph of the final work a secondary status.

In much the same way, in the critical edition of La pietra del paragone edited by Patricia B. Brauner and Anders Wiklund, the sources of L'equivoco stravagante were never taken into consideration. A manuscript score of L'occasione fa il ladro (Venice, Teatro San Moisè, 24 November 1812) does however appear in the list of sources examined, acting as the main source for No. 9bis, Aria Giocondo, ‘Ah! mentr'io sospiro e peno’. We thus find a source from another opera, apparently contradicting the indications provided in the updated version of the editorial criteria.³¹ The aria ‘Ah! mentr'io sospiro e peno’ does not belong to the original version of La pietra del paragone, but was added on the occasion of the second nineteenth-century staging of this opera, which took place in Venice at the Teatro San Benedetto in April 1813. In all likelihood, Rossini supervised this staging (in person or from a distance), given that the autograph score of La pietra del paragone contains a fragment of a recitative (also in Rossini's hand) composed to introduce this very aria, of which the only known musical source is however included in a complete copy of L'occasione fa il ladro, now conserved in Parma's Biblioteca Palatina.³² In the source, this number is given to the tenor of L'occasione fa il ladro, Conte Alberto, substituting the aria originally composed by Rossini for this opera (No. 5 Aria Alberto ‘D'ogni più sacro impegno’). Some features of the piece contained in this source of L’occasione fa il ladro nevertheless make it plausible that this is precisely the aria sung in the Venice 1813 version: it is indeed the only known musical source that contains the verbal text of the aria as it appears in the Venice libretto of La pietra del paragone; the vocal range corresponds to that of a high-tenor like Serafino Gentili, who interpreted the part of Giocondo in La pietra del paragone in Venice and who shortly thereafter interpreted the role of Lindoro in L'Italiana in Algeri (Venice, Teatro San Benedetto, 22 May 1813). The aria furthermore contains a quotation (or more precisely an anticipation) of Fiorilla's Aria ‘Squallida veste e bruna’ from Il Turco in Italia (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, 14 August 1814), a sign that leads us to imagine that Rossini may have written this piece. These exceptional circumstances thus encouraged the editors to ‘violate’ the guidelines expressly indicated in the editorial criteria, turning to a musical source that belongs to the textual tradition of another opera for this single piece: this is thus a true instance of ‘force majeure’, given that for this aria there are no specific sources for La pietra del paragone.

The third example appears in Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra (Naples, Teatro di San Carlo, 4 October 1815), the critical edition of which was prepared by Vincenzo Borghetti. This opera was almost entirely composed by recuperating pre-existing musical material, but in each case rewritten and reworked by Rossini. The sources of the original operas were not taken into consideration for any passage, with the exception of the autograph score of the incidental music for Edipo coloneo,³³ which provided a suggestion for a tempo indication, not found in the autograph of Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra, at bar 48 in No. 10, Scena e Aria Leicester.³⁴

Vincenzo Borghetti has furthermore edited a precise reconstruction of the Vienna version of this opera, prepared by Rossini in 1822.³⁵ Here, Rossini substituted part of No. 10 Scena e Aria Leicester, with a new instrumental recitative followed by a Duetto for Norfolc and Leicester (‘Rendersi al tuo bel core’). The latter was included in Ricciardo e Zoraide, as the Duetto Ricciardo-Agorante ‘Donala a questo core’. Alongside the autograph score of Ricciardo e Zoraide,³⁶ only two other sources of this piece are known, both of which explicitly link it to Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra: a piano-vocal score published in Vienna by Artaria and a copy of an orchestral manuscript discovered in the archives of the Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (Vienna).³⁷ This manuscript was used – following the indications provided in the editorial criteria – as the principal source for the piece. A comparison between the autograph score of Ricciardo e Zoraide and the Vienna manuscript shows that the latter conserves a few peculiar readings, which might be traced to a version of the piece partially reworked by Rossini himself, who was in Vienna at the time. The edition therefore conserves these autonomous readings. Among the latter, the most striking is without doubt the change in tempo (from Maestoso to Più presto) at bars 53–58, which are not found in the autograph for Ricciardo e Zoraide. On the contrary, in the Vienna manuscript the parts of the second flute and the second bassoon are absent almost everywhere. Suspecting that these omissions might not have been intentional, the edition suggests integrating these parts, adapting them from the autograph score of Ricciardo e Zoraide; to draw attention to their different origin, they are printed in a smaller type. Deciding to choose the Viennese manuscript as the main source thus made it possible to give more emphasis to the partial reworking of the passage that occurred in the transition from Ricciardo e Zoraide to Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra.

Conclusions

An analysis of the cases described above allows us to reach some general conclusions. In the majority of these cases, the volumes of operas published thus far in the Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini promoted by the Fondazione Rossini have treated these numerous self-borrowings in a way that shows a full awareness of their nature. The fact that, except for a few particular cases, virtually no reuse has been taken up sic et simpliciter, but almost all have been accompanied by work in revision and elaboration, led the editorial committee (and the single editors) to avoid hasty contaminations among the traditions of different operas, conserving the textual autonomy of each single piece edited. It was possible to prepare critical editions of operas such as La Cenerentola, Zelmira, Adina and L'equivoco stravagante, precisely by giving great attention to this very aspect.

Observing the cases from La gazza ladra and the Cantata in onore del sommo pontefice Pio Nono, one common denominator seems to appear: all interactions among the textual traditions of different works came about when complete autograph sources for the derived pieces do not exist, these pieces almost always taking the form of copies (with or without sporadic autograph annotations) or partial autograph sources (particelle). The autographs of the original operas were given a predominant role in collations both because they are generally more correct than any available copy, and because they are perceived to be closer to the composer's authentic thought, even though the written form they took on was intended for a different occasion than the one concerned by the opera being edited.

The knowledge that any written formalization records the composer's thought at a specific time and for a specific occasion is the principle underlying the hierarchy of sources used while editing the Duetto for Norfolc and Leicester ‘Rendersi al tuo bel core’ in Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra. The autograph of the original piece was in fact included as a collation that gave greater weight to the sources of the final opera, considered to be closer to Rossini's idea of the piece at the time it was reused. Comparing this choice with the one made for the self-borrowings contained in the first volume of the series (La gazza ladra), it becomes clear that in Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra the principle of the autograph's centrality, and the concepts of authenticity and originality, closely linked to this principle, were therefore put into question, even if only in the restricted area of the critical edition of a self-borrowing. In fact, the editorial strategy preferred is one which works first and foremost with the specific sources for the opera in question, instead of any possible autograph versions which were no doubt prepared by the composer, but for other occasions.

The results reached in over 40 years of publishing provide us with a valuable range of operational strategies, useful and indispensable models for future editions of Rossini's self-borrowings, some of which are already being prepared. Among these, in our context the critical edition (currently being prepared) of Eduardo e Cristina (Venice, Teatro San Benedetto, 24 April 1819) is particularly interesting.³⁸ Almost all of the 17 numbers that make up this score contain self-borrowings from previous operas; again, only a few passages were newly composed for it, some of which were reused by Rossini in later works.³⁹ This means that, in addition to the specific sources for Eduardo e Cristina (none of which is autograph, with the exception of two folios bound into the autograph of Ricciardo e Zoraide),⁴⁰ the sources (whether autograph or otherwise) of the original works are also available, as are those for the operas which took up these materials. Comparing the sources for Eduardo e Cristina with those for the original or final operas reveals the existence of more or less extensive readings Rossini elaborated precisely for this opera. This is why the editorial strategy adopted for this edition always follows the sources for Eduardo e Cristina, giving a secondary status to those for other operas, even if the latter are autograph. This choice should lead to a text that reconstructs as closely as possible the one underlying this opera's premiere, the one closest to Rossini's idea of the opera in 1819.

To conclude, we might do well to recall a famous statement made by Rossini in his old age: ‘The edition you have set out to publish will give rise (justifiably) to much criticism, because the same pieces of music will be found in various operas’.⁴¹ These words summarize Rossini's opinion about the Nuova compiuta edizione di tutte le opere teatrali edite ed inedite ridotte per canto e piano del celebre maestro Gioachino Rossini, commendatore dell'ordine della Legion d'onore published by Ricordi between 1846 and 1864.⁴² Faced with the series of volumes published by the Fondazione Rossini, he would certainly have expressed himself in a less severe and concerned way.