TheNewyorker met the three people behind this ambitious musical project: librettist Luigi Ballerini, composer David Winkler, and director Stefanos Koroneos.
Rossini Perduto is based on a real historical meeting between Rossini and French author Alexandre Dumas. In 1849, Rossini invited Dumas to dinner, where they discussed the idea of collaborating on an opera entitled Les Etudiants de Boulogne (The Students of Bologna). One of the guests at the table offered to take notes on the conversation and deliver them to Rossini the next day. Unfortunately, this did not happen, and Rossini and Dumas abandoned the project.
Luigi Ballerini, an Italian author, poet, and translator who has lived here in the United States for many years, discovered this story through a series of feuilletons written by Dumas, in which he described this encounter and the idea for the plot of the work.
“And that’s how the opera came about. David [Winkler] and I want to do what Rossini and Dumas didn’t do,” Ballerini explains.
The collaboration between the three artists came about by chance. Ballerini and Winkler were already discussing the libretto when a mutual acquaintance suggested Koroneos as director.
“It’s really a team effort-it takes a lot of people coming together and working together, all with the same mindset, to make it happen,” Winkler says.
The opera is divided into three acts. The first explores why Rossini never wrote this opera. Among the characters who criticize Rossini for his “negligence,” we will find his ex-wife and other composers, including Wagner and Beethoven. The second act stages a performance of the fateful dinner between Rossini and Dumas. Finally, the third act is an “opera within the opera” in which we will learn about the lost plot of Les Etudiants de Boulogne.
Koroneos would not reveal what elements of Rossini’s style we will find in the opera, “It’s a surprise.” However, he did share that he drew inspiration from the world of cinema: “I was very inspired by a very famous German silent film, Metropolis, which is one of my favorite films. And I thought it was a great opportunity to create a project full of shadows and black and white images.”
For the most part, Koroneos says, his creative process is visual. “I’m very hands-on in everything. As a child, I wanted to be a designer. So my designs are largely made by me.” He has always had a photographic memory, and this has a great impact on the way he sees the world, he tells us, “I see it as a mosaic of a million postcards, each with a life of its own, and this is what I create: living images.”
The most important and memorable scene in this opera, according to Koroneos, takes place in Act I: “A Greek character, who is not really connected to what Rossini was doing in his life, nevertheless manages to direct the conversation and bring the other characters to life, so much so that they almost get into an argument. And this is something that happens a lot in everyday life.”
The opera was written in Italian, a real challenge for American composer David Winkler: “For me, as a composer, the most difficult aspect of the whole process was to become as fluent as possible in understanding the nuances of the libretto,” Winkler explained.
However, composing Rossini Perduto fulfilled one of Winkler’s great ambitions: “This process began with the desire I always had to compose an opera in Italian. I always wanted to do it. Italian is the most natural and spontaneous language for opera,” he told us.
The year 2025 marks the 200-year anniversary of the staging of the first opera in New York: Il Barbiere di Siviglia, precisely a work by Rossini.
“We concluded the work with a quote from the American poet Ezra Pound: <<To have done instead of not to do is not vanity>>, Ballerini pointed out. “We are saying that creating art, like creating anything, if you are personally responsible for what you do, is a source of pleasure and happiness that cannot be found anywhere else.”
Rossini Perduto will make its debut at the St. Jean Theater on May 22. Tickets are already on sale.
The article Rossini Perduto: new opera inspired by maestro will debut in New York comes from TheNewyorker.
