Why you should not miss La cambiale di matrimonio

Venice: the happiest city in the world, according to Stendhal. A former capital that, according to historians, was in decline after the end of the Serenissima Republic (1797). The year is 1810; the person who ended that republic – Napoleon Bonaparte – rules; Europe has been at war for almost twenty years; inflation is sky-high; but there is one thing that no one who has even a little money in his pocket wants to give up: an evening at the theatre. Every year Venice produces new plays, comedies and tragedies; Goldoni’s city may have conquered the waves of the sea, but not the stage. It was there, in a small theatre near the church of San Moisè, that on 3 November, almost unnoticed – but with moderate success – a farce, a small one-act play called La cambiale di matrimonio was performed. It was the debut of a young composer living and studying in Bologna, but born eighteen years earlier in Pesaro, whose name was Gioachino Rossini. A recommended composer, because recommendations do not always promote the undeserving, catapulted into the autumn season of San Moisè because a German composer (Johann Caspar Aiblinger) suddenly withdrew. To replace him, Rossini is urged on by a couple of musicians, Rosa Morandi, a singer working at the theatre, and her husband Giovanni, a composer, friends of the Rossini family – another family of musicians. Gioachino has already composed a lot of music and is writing or has already written a serious opera, he is known in Bologna and Ravenna, but not outside this short course. The impresario Antonio Cera trusted the young man, who took the libretto by Gaetano Rossi and set it to music in a few weeks. The rest is history and legend.

It is said that the singers were unhappy with Rossini’s complex music (let’s face it, the more experienced musicians can’t wait to catch the newcomers in the act); it is said that the 18-year-old burst into tears after the first rehearsals; it is said that one of the singers (the great comedian Luigi Raffanelli) took pity on him and gave him some advice; that Giovanni Morandi helped him with the music; in short, that not everything went smoothly, but that in the end the boy triumphed. Legend or history? There is only one way to find out: come to Pesaro in August 2025.

This year, the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro is staging La cambiale, for the first time in the critical edition edited by Eleonora Di Cintio for the Fondazione Rossini. The purpose of the critical edition is not only to let us hear the opera with the music of 1810 (which it does in any case, cleansing it of all the encrustations of two centuries, thanks to a meticulous study of the available sources), but also to see a work of art in its entirety, revealing its history, discovering its motivations and, finally, making it speak, allowing us, the contemporaries, to interact with the opera of the past. Why, for example, was a passage from a duet removed before the premiere? why was it perhaps too complicated? why was the role of the protagonist written as it was? why these pieces, in this position, and not others? what did La cambiale mean at the time of its creation and what does it mean to us today? This is the task of the critical edition (of this one, as of all the others produced by the Fondazione Rossini): not to stand in the way, but to unveil it, to let the audience and the performers see through it. Having patiently reconstructed the genesis, the events, the importance of La cambiale in Rossini’s time and biography, we will be able to better enjoy the rich hour of pure entertainment that it guarantees us.

The plot is amusing: a pair of bizarre businessmen (Mill, English; Slook, Canadian, who appears in the ROF show accompanied by an even more bizarre ‘friend’ – whom we will not reveal) negotiate the marriage of a girl (Fannì) ‘by bill of exchange’, as if she were a commodity that Slook had to collect; she, however, loves a young man (Edoardo), who, thanks to the good offices of Mill’s two employees, Clarina and Norton, breaks into the house to prevent the marriage. In the end, the “stranger” shows unparalleled generosity and makes Fannì and Edoardo’s dream of love come true. An apologue in which the usual gallery of human vices and weaknesses (but also virtues) is not lacking.

Then there is Rossini’s music, which is that formidable conductor of electricity that we know: it moves at a rapid pace, it introduces for the first time all those phrases, those tics that we will hear again later, never the same, always surprising. Each character has his own character, each situation is shaped by the notes. The boy has a great future ahead of him and an immense talent.

Of course, what if the Rossini family had not been friends with the Morandi family? What if a German composer had not pulled out at the last minute? What if the impresario of the San Moisè had not listened to the recommendations of those who told him about a phenomenal composer who had just turned eighteen? In short, if there had been no La cambiale di matrimonio, would Gioachino Rossini still have become Rossini? Probably yes: but when we witness the performance of Rossini’s first opera, we can ask ourselves a series of ‘what ifs’, relieved that history has not only gone this way, but that it has left us a little gem to rediscover. Because today, as in 1810, there is one thing we really cannot do without: a great evening at the theatre.

Daniele Carnini – Editorial Director of the Fondazione Rossini

Published in : 29 March 2025