About this concert
Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle (1863), the late mass that is neither small nor especially solemn, performed under Nayer Nagui in the Basilique of Heliopolis, whose acoustics suit its blend of operatic melody and sacred counterpoint.
Programme
- Work
- Rossini: Petite Messe Solennelle
About the music
Gioachino Rossini, Petite Messe Solennelle
- Composed in 1863 at Passy, near Paris, when Rossini was about 71, decades after his last opera.
- Scored for twelve singers, two pianos and harmonium; first performed on 14 March 1864 in the Paris home of the Comtesse Louise de Pillet-Will, its dedicatee.
- Rossini wrote on the score: “Dear Lord, here it is finished, this poor little mass.”
- He orchestrated it in 1867; that version was first heard in 1869, three months after his death.
Source (opens in a new tab) Photographs
Photography: Mina Rostom
