Surveying the History of Rossini’s Russian Contacts: the Composer’s Autographs in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Archives

Surveying the History of Rossini’s Russian Contacts:
the Composer’s Autographs in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Archives

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Keywords: Gioachino Rossini, Ivan M. Tolstoy, Aleksandr D. Garfild-Dmitriev, Matvey Yu. Wielhorski, Federico Pescantini, Amalia Ferraris, Giovanni Bottesini, Carlo Cicimarra, Mavrikiy Ya. Rappaport, Tito Ricordi, Giovanni Bonola, Antonio Tamburini, Giovanni Rubini.

Author: Anastasia A. Logunova

About the author

ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6476-4630
SPIN-code: 2891-9368
e-mail: ventolibero@mail.ru

PhD (Arts, 2018), Associate Professor at the Western Music History Department at the Saint Petersburg Rimsky-Korsakov State Conservatory
2 liter А Glinki St., St. Petersburg 190068, Russia

Submitted on: 08.11.2019

Published on: 15.05.2020

Abstract

The article continues the documentary publication in the Opera musicologica, no. 4 (2019) and deals with unknown facts from the history of relations between Rossini and subjects of the Russian Empire on the basis of the materials from the Russian State Historical Archive, the State Archive of the Russian Federation, the Russian National Museum of Music, the National Library of Russia, the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music, the Russian State Literature and Arts Archive. The main attention is paid to letters by Rossini to Ivan M. Tolstoy, testifying to the composer’s long-term friendly relations with the influential Russian official from the entourage of Alexander II. Among Rossini’s letters of recommendation, messages to Tito Ricordi and Giovanni Bonola about a Russian singer Aleksandr Dmitriev are of particular interest. Six letters and a musical autograph presented in this article not only open a new page in the history of Rossini’s Russian contacts, but also contain little-studied facts concerning the composer’s biography and his Italian connections. Most autographs are published for the first time.

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For citation: Logunova, Anastasia A. “Surveying the History of Rossini’s Russian Contacts: the Composer’s Autographs in the St. Petersburg and Moscow Archives.” In Opera musicologica, vol. 12, no. 2 (2020), pp. 64–98 (in Russian). DOI: 10.26156/OM.2020.12.2.004.