Edited by Ferdinando Sulla (2024)
Revision on the sources in preparation for the critical edition
NR 142850
Gioachino Rossini’s Messa di Ravenna – as this work has been known for several decades – is a fascinating example of early 19th-century Italian sacred music, in terms of the genre’s historical and stylistic contexts. It also represents a turning point for young Rossini, at a time in his life that in certain respects remains shrouded in mystery.
From direct and indirect testimony that has survived, and thanks to past research by Rossini experts, we’ve been able to reconstruct the genesis of this concise yet remarkable masterpiece of sacred music, which was inspired by the summers young Rossini spent in Ravenna – where he was hosted by friend and patron Agostino Triossi – and came in the wake of his earliest compositions as a student at Bologna’s Philharmonic Lyceum under Stanislao Mattei.
Messa di Ravenna, like Messa di Milano (1812-1813), is structured according to the three-part Messa di Gloria formula, which was very much in vogue in Italy at that time, using the standard Kyrie-Gloria-Credo framework. Each section contains alternating choral and soloist parts.
Considering the slight changes in the vocal and instrumental lineups from one section to the next, which we also see in Messa di Milano, we may suppose that individual parts were originally conceived as self-contained pieces, and were only later put together with a grand performance in mind. Emblematic, in Messa di Ravenna, is the case of the “Qui tollis”. Among the manuscripts housed in the Archbishopric of Ravenna Archives, there is no trace of the score that contains the three verses from the Gloria – “Qui tollis peccata mundi miserere nobis. Qui tollis peccata mundi suscipe deprecationem nostram. Qui sedes ad dexteram Patris miserere nobis.” Of course, the score may have been lost. Although we might also hypothesize that Rossini had recycled a piece he’d written previously. It appears that in 1869, to fill the gap, Ravenna-based tenor and teacher Giuseppe Forlivesi was responsible for a contrafactum involving a duet from Rossini’s 1811 opera L’equivoco stravagante. For this edition, and in accordance with the Rossini Foundation, we opted to fill that gap with “Qui tollis” for tenor solo, whose original score is housed in the Fabrizio Trisi Library in Lugo, Italy – a choice corroborated by the presence of several Messa di Ravenna manuscripts found there. This reordering of the pieces would seem to coincide with liturgical and textual criteria for completeness, while maintaining a flow of harmonic coherence and vocal participation with the parts that precede and follow.
On the other hand, the adoption of the Bolognese “Qui tollis” for soprano solo, performed several weeks earlier at the Santuario della Guardia in Bologna, would buttress the female vocal part in the second version of “Gratias – Domine Deus”, which Rossini may have considered early on to be suited for a castrato, a falsetto or a so-called musichetto. He wound up assigning that vocal role to a tenor, based on the rest of the choral lineup. The Ravenna manuscripts contain two pieces that use the same lyrics, which, from a liturgical perspective, would not appear justified.
The Ravenna copy of the score for Messa di Ravenna was brought to light sometime around 1830-1850 by Andrea Ligi, musical director for the Ravenna Cathedral, which he’d found at a used book stand. It was performed at the Ravenna Cathedral on March 28, 1869, thanks to the urging of Archbishop and Cardinal Enrico Orfei. Confirmation of the Ravenna manuscript’s faithfulness to Rossini’s original version came about after the surfacing of various other Messa di Ravenna manuscript scores, including the previously mentioned Lugo manuscripts, as well as those housed in the archives of what was once the Ravenna Philharmonic Academy, today known as the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory.
WP of the critical edition: 11.08.2024 Pesaro, Rossini Opera Festival