Max Derrickson

Even as a young lad, Schubert was working on writing an opera. At the beginning of the 19th Century, opera was usually what made a composer famous, and Schubert very much wished for that fame. Although he eventually wrote eight operas, none of them has endured as his best works, but in the meantime Schubert found that his greatest successes were to be found in other musical genres, with chamber music, art songs, symphonies and in several of his operatic Overtures.

War and love is the theme of Tancredi, the story first expressed in Greek stories, then penned by Voltaire (1760). And war in Rossini’s Italy was as ever present as he claimed of Napoleon – Tancredi was a sure-fire message for Italian audiences, and it was in this opera that Rossini put all of his talents together that make us now regard him as a genius: flowing operatic narrative, exciting music, beautifully tuneful arias, powerful choruses….