Carlo Soliva: Giulia e Sesto Pompeo.

Abstract

Here’s a pleasant surprise. Carlo Soliva (1791–1853) is truly a forgotten composer; when was the last time one of his operas was revived in a staged performance? Not unlike Mascagni, Soliva enjoyed an early success that he was unable to duplicate. His La testa di bronzo (first performed at La Scala in 1816) earned the praise of Stendhal and was performed in Naples, Venice, and Dresden. None of Soliva’s subsequent operas created quite as much initial excitement or displayed any real staying power in the repertory. The conventional wisdom about Soliva is that he found the competition of Rossini overwhelming. But this explanation is probably too facile; other composers of the era, faced with the success of Rossini’s operas, kept right on working. Although Soliva lived until 1853, he abandoned opera in the mid-1820s—ironically, only a few years before Rossini himself retired from the operatic stage, after Guillaume Tell (1829).