Fogli d’album: Anna Bonitatibus & Adele d’Aronzo explore the barely tapped wealth of Rossini’s occasional pieces

Rossini – Fogli d’album; Anna Bonitatibus, Adele d’Aronzo; Prospero  
Reviewed 22 September 2026

Rossini’s occasional pieces, each dedicated to a friend and patron, brought together in a wonderfully fulfilling recital that wears its learning lightly

Rossini’s Guillaume Tell premiered at the Paris Opera in 1829. The effort of composing it left him exhausted but within a year he was planning an operatic treatment of the Faust story. However, the revolution of July 1830 ushered in a new regime under Louis Philippe I and Rossini’s lifetime annuity was cut. Any thought of new opera was on hold. This combined with persistent ill-health meant he never returned to large-scale operatic composition.

His years of retirement in Paris with his new mistress,  Olympe Pélissier, left Rossini’s wife, Isabella Colbran in Italy where she ended up living with Rossini’s father and dying in 1845.

Rossini’s didn’t give up large compositions altogether and we have the Stabat Mater (begun in 1831 and completed in 1841), and the Petite Messe Solennelle (from 1864), plus his cantata Giovanna d’Arco (written in 1832 for Olympe and revised in 1859). But his main compositional activity was smaller pieces, collected together in Les soirées musicales (1830-1835) and Péchés de vieillesse, an astonishing collection of some 150 vocal, chamber and solo piano pieces.

Though the late 1830s and 1840s were something of a fallow period, compositionally, it seems that he never really lost the habit of composition. In addition to the above there are a myriad of other pieces, largely songs and piano works, often quite short.

This new album from mezzo-soprano Anna Bonitatibus and pianist Adele d’Aronzo on Prospero, Rossini – Fogli d’album explores the barely tapped wealth of Rossini’s occasional pieces. The disc draws together some 34 pieces, largely vocal and some very short, which Rossini dedicated to musicians, friends, politicians, artists, noblemen and noblewomen. Some 26 of the pieces are first recordings, and the performers aimed to be faithful to the autograph source or earliest printed source available.

The songs are performed in chronological order, where possible, so we begin in 1801 in Bologna and end in Paris in 1867 where the elderly composer was editing a piano piece, La plainte by Ninette Nicolo (1814-1876) whose father, the composer Nicolo (1773-1818) was admired by Rossini. In between we have a mixture, pieces written for friends alongside those dedicated to performers and to Royalty. Tutta Forza, a pieno Petto, senza Freno, for instance, is dedicated to the Bolognese tenor Giovanni Solieri, a mere four bars written in Florence in 1851/52. (Solieri had been in the choir for the premiere of the Stabat Mater in 1842).

There is nothing particularly operatic here, and any coloratura is kept firmly within bounds. But some pieces have operatic links. The arietta Quai voci, qui note (1813), dedicated to Adelaide Malanotti (the first Tancredi), features verses by Luigi Leche in whose archive it was found alongside a new finale for Tancredi. Rossini even includes little pointers to the opera. Infelice ch’io son (from 1821, Naples) uses a theme from Maometto II (1820, Naples) and judging by the writing may have been written for Colbran. And there is a second setting, dating from Rossini and Colbran’s time in Vienna in 1822. La separazione (from 1851-1856) is dedicated to his pupil the contralto Corinna De Luigi (a specialist in trouser roles) who premiered it in Paris in 1856.

Un’empia mel rapi (from 1824, London) recycles a moment from Ermione. This opera premiered in Naples in 1819 and failed, though Rossini returned to the music and recycled it. The text is by the librettist of Ermione, Andrea Tottola, and the autograph appears in an album of the celebrated pianist and composer Maria Szymanowska (1789-1831). A later version (undated) was dedicated to the French composer Auguste Vincent (1829-1888).

A setting of Mi lagnero tacendo is evidently written as a humorous response to a setting of the text by Neapolitan composer Michele Carafa (1787-1872) with whom Rossini collaborated on Mose in Egitto. Francesca da Rimini (from 1848-1855, Florence) sets lines from Dante and dedicated to ‘Milord Vernon’, probably the Dante scholar Lord John Warren Vernon (1803-1866) and the piece appeared in Vernon’s edition of Inferno (published in 1865 in London and Florence). A tiny eight-bar Mi lagnero tacendo (from 1850s) seems to be dedicated to Giovanni Pacini (1796-1867) with whom Rossini wrote Mathilde de Shabran. A further Mi lagnero tacendo (from 1857, Passy) is dedicated to the soprano Dolores Nau who sang in Berlioz’s French version of Weber’s Der Freischutz and Urbain in Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots.

La passagietta (from 1831, Madrid) is dedicated to Her Majesty Maria Cristina of Bourbon and was written in Spain where Rossini met the royal family. Odia la pastorella (from 1836, Paris) is dedicated to the Crown Prince of Sweden and Norway, Oscar Bernadotte (1799-1859). Setting Metastasio (from Issipile, 1732) the canzonetta was seeming written for the prince to sing.

A Waltz is dedicated to the pianist Charlotte de Rothschild (1825-1899) who was a pupil of Chopin, and Rossini had a long friendship with her banker father and arts patron mother. The piece reuses a theme from an earlier waltz, dedicated to Eugenia Puerari who might be from the Puerari banking family

One curiosity is the settings of a text by Metastasio, Mi lagnero tacendo of which there are many on the disc. The text comes from Siroe (1726), it is not known why the verses took such a hold of the composer.

I can think of no-one better to perform this repertoire than Anna Bonitatibus and Adele d’Aronzo. The two have already recorded Rossini’s Giovanna d’Arco as part of their Monologues disc on Prospero [see my review]. The canvas is smaller here [Giovanna d’Arco last 17 minutes] but no less vivid. When coloratura is needed, Bonitatibus gives it space and vibrancy, yet she is good on the small scale too. Each song, no matter how short, is full of vivid character. In many of these, we have to admit that Rossini’s music hovers between salon and opera house. Yet the music is never trivial and for all the composer’s charm, there is much of interest.

An impressive amount of work has gone into this disc and it should not be discounted, particularly the degree of travail needed to locate the primary sources for all these pieces. Anna Bonitatibus provides extensive notes which are a joy to read, elucidating each song. This means that the recital provides a lovely travelogue as we follow Rossini on his peregrinations and marvel at his impressive connections. On the other hand, the resulting programme is engaging and engrossing. Simply as a recital, this works wonderfully and listening at one sitting is very fulfilling.

Rossini – Fogli d’album
Anna Bonitatibus (mezzo-soprano)
Adele d’Aronzo (piano)
Recorded: 19–20 November 2024; 23 April 2025 Fazioli Concert Hall, Sacile (PN), Italy
Prospero Classical PROSP51137 1CD [56.46]