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The Italian Girl in Algiers A Savvy Dame and a Boorish Bey Gioacchino Rossini must have gone through the dictionary to find the oddest word in the Italian language to set to music. And he found it. Pappataci translates inelegantly as "Chow down and shut up!" It's also the name for a three-day fever, caused by the bite of a bloodsucking female sandfly. One would hardly imagine that a sparkling operatic scene could be built around it, but that's exactly what 21-year-old Rossini did. The Pappataci (pronounced pah-pah-TAH-chee) episode occurs during the final act of his 11th opera, The Italian Girl in Algiers, when clever, seductive Isabella, a wealthy Italian girl, pokes fun at the salacious and stupid Mustapha, Bey of Algiers, who has kidnapped her for his harem but is getting nowhere in his attempts at seduction. Isabella convinces the Bey that she has honored him by making him one of her Pappataci, an exclusive sect whose members are required to eat, drink, sleep, and be quiet. While the delighted Mustapha obediently digs into his spaghetti, Isabella escapes with her Italian lover, Lindoro, who had also been held captive. Rossini might well have been poking fun at himself in this delightful scene, for his reputation as an epicure was growing, as was his midriff. Indeed, the portrait of himself that he presented some years later to young Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) reveals a paunchy fellow who had a weakness for pate de foie gras. As for keeping silence, well, that did not fit with the exuberant, witty manner for which Rossini was also known. Pappataci aside, there is much else to chuckle over in this consistently clever and admittedly ridiculous opera, whose effect is as effervescent as a bottle of fine champagne. Another high point is the Act I finale, a mishmash of confusion, which opens with a mockingly pompous chorus in praise of "Mustapha, the scourge of women." It builds to one of those breathless Rossini crescendos punctuated with nonsense sounds ("cra cra, bum bum, din din tac tac"), ornamented by strings and piccolos. In the same act is Isabella's florid aria "Cruda sorte!" (Cruel fate), which bears a certain resemblance to the famous "Una voce poco fà" (A voice, a little while ago) sung by Rosina -- another lady who knows how to get what she wants -- in a later Rossini opera, The Barber of Seville. It is easy to treat The Italian Girl in Algiers as if it is pure farce, but in truth Rossini's figures are far from stock characters, for they are developed with a depth and refinement not typical of that period's opera buffa. Two of its arias, Lindoro's Act I cavatina, "Languir per una bella"(To languish for a beautiful lady) about his absent, and as yet unnamed, beloved, and Isabella's Act II aria, "Per lui che adoro" (For him whom I adore) easily could have been placed in a serious work. And the patriotic aria sung by Isabella, "Pensa alla patria" (Think of the homeland) struck a nationalistic chord at a time when much of Italy was under foreign domination. The Italian Girl in Algiers (as well as Rossini's two other comic masterpieces, The Barber of Seville and Cinderella) is thought to have been written for Marietta Marcolini, a fine contralto of good looks and superb comedic skills; she was as well one of the several women with whom his name was linked romantically. The opera followed on the heels of the comic Il Signor Bruschino and one of Rossini's greatest serious operas, Tancredi, all three having been composed in a dizzying period of one year. The librettist was Angelo Anelli, no great poet but able to convey well through words the spirit of the irrepressible Isabella, a character based on the well-known legend of the beautiful Roxelana, favorite slave of Solomon the Second. The opera was composed in either 18 or 27 days, depending on which source one uses (Rossini, not surprisingly, pegged it at 18). That he composed so quickly is a tribute to his genius and the fact that at the time composers were accustomed to taking such shortcuts as borrowing from themselves and from others in order to complete works quickly. Without royalties or production rights beyond the premiere, they were hardly in a financial position to linger too long over any one creation. The Italian Girl in Algiers captivated the pleasure-loving Venetian audiences, and even the critics, who cheered it at its May 22, 1813 premiere at the San Benedetto Theater of Venice. The composer was surprised at its success. He is reported to have said the morning after the premiere: "I thought after having heard my opera, the Venetians would treat me like a crazy man; they turned out to be crazier than I am." And the Venetians weren't alone. Munich reacted with similar enthusiasm in 1816 and New York in 1832. (In Paris the opera fared less well at its 1817 premiere, with an anti-Rossini clique which began its booing even before the music started.) An amusing sidelight to the opera's success is that when Rossini moved to Milan and composed The Turk in Italy, audiences grumbled that it was a copy of Italian Girl in Algiers. It wasn't, despite the oddly similar title in reverse. If anything, Italian Girl is perhaps closer to The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart, a composer he greatly admired, along with Cimarosa and Haydn. It is a sad irony that the sparkle and joie de vivre of The Italian Girl in Algiers and Rossini's many other comic operas are in stark contrast to what he often felt within. For the pleasure-loving composer was also a sensitive man cowed by depression. This problem, along with serious physical ailments and growing disillusionment with his profession, caused Rossini to abruptly and permanently cease his operatic composition at age 36, when he was at the height of his powers. In all, he had composed 39 operas, the last being the vast and ambitious William Tell. He lived for four more decades, feted around the world, but with few works emanating from his once facile pen, one notable exception being a few examples of sacred music. We are today in a period of renewed interest in Rossini, thanks in part to the emergence of singers capable of the florid coloratura and fine acting his operas demand. New critical editions of his works have been important in removing the excesses and outright mistakes that had crept into performances. Gioacchino Rossini's fine biographer Francis Toye tells a little-known story. Back in 1817, the composer was en route to visit his parents in Bologna. Stopping at Spoleto with his friend, the amateur composer Marchese Sampieri, he learned that The Italian Girl in Algiers was playing at the local theater. On a whim, Sampieri took over at the piano, while Rossini placed himself in the pit to play the double bass. How delighted the young composer must have been to hear the ripples of laughter emanating from the audience. Could he ever have guessed that, almost two centuries later, his pert Isabella would still hold center-stage, with enough charm to turn all of us into willing Pappataci?
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