About this concert
Rossini’s Petite Messe Solennelle (1863) returned on two nights: at the Cairo Opera House on 12 May and at the Basilique in Heliopolis on 13 May, under Nayer Nagui.
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.
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