ROSSINI OPERA FESTIVAL PESARO – OÁZA BELCANTA
THE ROSSINI OPERA FESTIVAL – AN OASIS OF BEL CANTO

Summary/Abstract: This article discusses the renowned Rossini Opera Festival, which has been performed annually since 1980 in the Italian city of Pesaro, the birthplace of Gioachino Rossini. The monothematic festival systematically focuses on the composer’s 39 operas. An exceptional aspect of the festival is the close interconnectedness between musicological research and its practical application in music and theatre. The greatest value of the festival is in the discovery of the maestro’s opera scores, the reconstruction of manuscripts based on sources from the period of Rossini’s life and in the performance of his operas, which have been cleansed of distortional additions to the interpretive tradition under the auspices of the Rossini Foundation. The ambition of the festival is to revive the operatic legacy of this composer. After its 35th year there only remains one work of Rossini’s to be performed at Pesaro, the operatic drama Edoardo e Cristina. Among other things, the performances of Rossini’s work at Pesaro can be summarized as correcting the simplified image of Rossini as a composer of comical operas. The Rossini Opera Festival is considered to be the greatest event in the calendar for bel canto vocal aesthetics, setting the trend and guarding the purity of this highly difficult vocal style. In addition to outlining the dramaturgical, interpretive and theatrical context of the festival, the article reflects upon the 35th staging of the festival, which took place from 10 to 24 August 2014.

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