[Autograph signed manuscript] 'Mi lagnerò tacendo'.

Bookseller Notes

'Mi lagner tacendo / della mia sorte amara, ah! /Ma ch'io non t'ami / o cara, non lo sperar da me.'Rossini set Pietro Metastasio's 'Mi lagner tacendo' as Il Rimprovero in Les Soires Musicales (1830-1835), one of the first works he wrote following his retirement from opera. He subsequently set the text over 50 times, sometimes in the form of full-blown songs, often, as here, as miniature album pieces. One short setting was included in his Pchs de vieillesse collection (1857-1868), while varying manuscript versions are held by the British Library (1830), Harvard (1852) and the Morgan Library (1860).In the midst of his opera-writing career, the composer would tend to compose strictly for a libretto, but in his later years, when developing a musical idea, the text became a fall-back syllabic pattern, largely devoid of semantic purpose. The tone, for example, of this setting from 1834, his final year in Paris, in G major with a 2/4 time signature, a rising-falling vocal phrase repeated over modulating piano chords, followed by a 4-bar mini cadenza, marked for repetition, and a final coda, is light and playful.(Reto Mller, Pchs de vieillesse: Chamber Music and Rarities, Vol. 2, Naxos, 2018; Richard Stokes, Pchs de vieillesse, Vol, 13, Hyperion, 2008)