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Le Siège de Corinthe, or Pamyra’s choice Pesaro
Auditorium Scavolini
08/11/2026 - & August 14, 17, 21, 2026
Gioachino Rossini : Le Siège de Corinthe
Adrian Sâmpetrean (Mahomet II), Matteo Roma (Cléomène), Vasilisa Berzhanskaya (Pamyra), Maxim Mironov (Néoclès), Christophe Fel (Hiéros), Tianxuefei Sun (Adraste), Giuseppe de Luca (Omar), Anna‑Doris Capitelli (Ismène)
Coro del Teatro Ventidio Basso, Pasquale Veleno (chorus master), Orchestra del Teatro Comunale di Bologna, Carlo Rizzi (conductor)
Davide Livermore (stage director, sets), Eleonora Peronetti, Paolo Gep Cucco (sets), D‑Wok (videodesign), Gianluca Falaschi (costumes), Nicola Bovey (lighting), Erika Rambaldoni (choreography)
V. Berzhanskaya (© Amati Bacciardi)
It was an excellent idea to present Le Siège de Corinthe at this year’s Festival, as it marked the bicentenary of the opera’s Parisian première. Rossini’s first French opera also offered Pesaro an opportunity to revisit one of the most intriguing episodes in the composer’s theatrical afterlife: the transformation of Maometto II, his great Neapolitan tragedy of 1820, into the grand opéra Le Siège de Corinthe, first performed in Paris in 1826. The latter was far more than a French translation of its predecessor. Rossini substantially remodelled the score, redistributed its vocal forces, enlarged its choral and ceremonial dimensions and recast the drama for a Parisian public whose appetite for historical spectacle was considerably greater than Naples’s.
The differences were nowhere more consequential than in the central characters. Paolo Erisso became Cléomène, Anna became Pamyra, and the contralto Calbo was transformed into the tenor Néoclès, thereby giving the heroine a more conventionally heroic amorous counterpart (though the love is one‑sided here). Indeed, several of the French opera’s most impressive numbers revealed their Neapolitan ancestry. Anna’s music was transformed into Pamyra’s great Act II scena, “Ô patrie infortunée”, which drew upon material associated with “Sì, ferite”, “Madre, a te” and Calbo’s “E d’un trono”. The trio “In questi estremi istanti”, sung by Erisso, Anna and Calbo in Maometto II, was remodelled as “Céleste providence” for Cléomène, Pamyra and Néoclès, its essentially private emotional predicament transmuted into an invocation of divine protection for an entire people. Even the Mahomet‑Anna encounter “Que vois‑je ?” survived in Le Siège, now as the confrontation between Mahomet and Pamyra, though its psychological implications were subtly but importantly altered.
Those alterations went to the heart of the two operas’ differing dramatic identities. Maometto II had been, at bottom, an intensely personal tragedy: Anna discovered that the man she had loved was Mahomet, the conqueror responsible for the destruction of her city, and found herself caught between filial loyalty, patriotic duty and an attachment that had become morally impossible. Its dramatic force derived from the terrible intimacy of that conflict, particularly the triangle formed by Mahomet, Anna and Erisso, with Calbo adding a further emotional complication.
Le Siège de Corinthe expanded that private tragedy into a national and quasi‑religious catastrophe. Pamyra was no longer quite so much the psychologically tormented woman at the centre of an impossible love as the embodiment of a civilisation under threat. The fall of Corinth, the collective resistance of the Greeks, the solemn interventions of Hièros and the ultimate martyrdom of the populace shifted the centre of gravity from individual psychology to patriotic spectacle. Rossini gained breadth, monumental choruses, ceremonial grandeur and the apparatus of French grand opéra; what he surrendered, at least to some extent, was the concentrated human drama that had made Maometto II so formidable.
The distinction was particularly telling in the denouement. Maometto II had culminated in the defeat of the Ottoman invader and Anna’s death, the tragedy remaining intensely focused upon the fate of its principal characters. Le Siège de Corinthe, by contrast, ended with the destruction of the city itself and the collective martyrdom of its defenders. The historical disguise was transparent: Rossini and his librettists had transposed the Greek War of Independence into an ostensibly fifteenth-century setting, with the fall of Corinth recalling the destruction of Missolonghi in 1826 and the blessing of the Greek standards evoking the celebrated ceremony at Agia Lavra, the symbolic birthplace of modern Greece, in 1821.
Thus the French opera had acquired an overtly political and historical dimension that its Neapolitan predecessor had not possessed in quite the same fashion. Yet this very enlargement also explained its dramatic vulnerability. Le Siège de Corinthe was the grander, more monumental and more public work; Maometto II remained the more concentrated and psychologically penetrating tragedy. The former turned the individual into an emblem, the latter allowed the individual to remain painfully, almost unbearably, human.
Italian director Davide Livermore, whose stagings of Don Carlo in Monte‑Carlo and Don Pasquale at La Scala had been quite appealing, disappointed with a production that accentuated Le Siège de Corinthe’s weakness relative to Maometto II. The Greeks of the 1470s were portrayed as Ancient Greeks, while the Ottomans appeared as grotesque Westerners from the 1920s, clad in white suits and behaving like caricatures of the stereotypical “bad American”. Oddly enough, their crass consumerism was conveyed through the smartphones with which they took countless selfies, as well as humiliating photographs of their Greek captives. This was astonishing coming from the usually reliable Livermore. Rendering the “good guys” as excessively saintly and the “bad guys” as irredeemably villainous could only weaken the drama.
It is possible that the Turks’ 1920s Western attire was intended as a clin d’œil to Atatürk and the 1922 fall of Smyrna. However, the analogy was misleading, since in that instance the Greeks were the invaders and the Turks the defenders. Moreover, relatively few members of the audience were likely to have been familiar with the historical details.
Livermore’s production was visually successful, thanks to the intelligent use of video design and AI. The “curator” of this summer’s Ring at Bayreuth could have learned a few lessons from this production team. The use of paintings by the Dutch artist Lawrence Alma‑Tadema (1836‑1912), depicting Classical Antiquity and the decadent luxury of the late Roman Empire, provided an appropriate backdrop for splendid images of Corinth. AI was then used to transform these breathtaking images into scenes of inferno and destruction, depicting the city engulfed in flames and ultimately collapsing.
Gianluca Falaschi’s costumes, Livermore’s sets, created with Eleonora Peronetti and Paolo Gep Cucco, Nicolas Bovey’s lighting and D‑Wok’s video design formed a coherent visual vocabulary, while animated Alma‑Tadema-like tableaux lent the production an appropriately museum‑like patina.
Carlo Rizzi was a more decisive success. He conducted with authority, discipline and an admirable sense of architectural proportion, finding in the score a predominantly martial gravity. His Rossini was less concerned with microscopic dynamic refinement than with the opera’s monumental profile, but this proved particularly effective in the great public scenes. Most impressive was his handling of the march accompanying the blessing of the standards: rather than driving the music headlong towards its conclusion, he allowed the tension to accumulate with almost ritual solemnity. The result was one of the evening’s most compelling moments and came close to eclipsing even the formidable finale.
The Orchestra of the Teatro Comunale di Bologna responded with considerable strength and polish, while the Coro del Teatro Ventidio Basso, prepared by Pasquale Veleno, sang with unusual authority. In an opera in which the chorus was not merely decorative but the embodiment of a besieged people, this mattered enormously.
The cast proved more heterogeneous, but it contained three performances of exceptional distinction: the soprano, the tenor and the bass. Maxim Mironov was magnificent as Néoclès. I first heard a very young Mironov as Paolo Erisso in Maometto II at La Fenice in 2005, when he made a strong impression with his beautiful timbre and brilliant technique. Two decades later, he remains one of the finest Rossini tenors around, as he had demonstrated in his recent Conte Almaviva in Parma‘s Il barbiere di Siviglia. Indeed, he is vastly superior to several of today’s “star” Rossini tenors. The Russian tenor brought to Néoclès precisely the combination of aristocratic vocal bearing and haute‑contre brilliance that the role demanded. His voice had acquired greater roundness and substance in the middle and lower registers, while the upper range retained its distinctive silvery radiance. His French was excellent, and his singing possessed a refinement that prevented virtuosity from becoming mere display. Mironov made Néoclès a credible dramatic presence rather than merely the tenor required to negotiate Rossini’s formidable writing. His performance was one of the evening’s outstanding achievements.
Even more spectacular was Russian soprano Vasilisa Berzhanskaya as Pamyra, who delivered a performance of astonishing vocal amplitude and fearlessness. I first became intrigued by Berzhanskaya six years ago, after hearing her as Rosina in a production of Il barbiere di Siviglia in Florence, where I was struck by both her acting and singing. At the time, I was uncertain whether I was hearing the standard mezzo‑soprano version of Rosina or the less frequently performed soprano version. Berzhanskaya’s timbre was distinctly mezzo‑soprano, yet her dazzling coloratura and agility were more characteristic of a soprano.
Two years later, the Russian singer changed my mind about a role I normally detested: Preziosilla in La forza del destino, which opened the season at La Scala. Last August, the then thirty‑two‑year‑old singer gave a dazzling recital of soprano arias at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro, a dramatic declaration of her intention to embark on a soprano career. Despite this audacious move, she continued to sing mezzo‑soprano roles, including Angelina in La Cenerentola, recently admired in Turin. More astonishingly, she chose to inaugurate her soprano career as Norma in Parma—a performance that was, to put it mildly, dazzling.
Apparently having embraced the soprano compass of the role with complete conviction, she negotiated its formidable demands with a mixture of power, agility and sheer nerve. Her voice travelled effortlessly across the auditorium, yet she could also produce exquisite filati and float the highest notes with enviable security. Her diction was only a shade less impressive than Mironov’s, but nevertheless superb. Indeed, Berzhanskaya was utterly convincing in this exceptionally demanding role.
Last heard as a magnificent Escamillo in Düsseldorf, the Romanian bass Adrian Sâmpetrean impressed once again, this time as Mahomet, with his elegant style and handsome timbre. The role was considerably less virtuosic than the corresponding part in Maometto II, but Sâmpetrean compensated with a commanding stage presence and an unmistakable dash that made Pamyra’s attraction to him entirely credible. His smooth, cultivated instrument was far removed from the stereotypical blustering conqueror, yet it possessed sufficient authority to suggest the ruthless power lurking beneath Mahomet’s urbane exterior. The interpretation thus suited both Rossini’s music and Livermore’s conception of the Ottoman ruler.
Italian tenor Matteo Roma gave Cléomène a sturdy, increasingly darkened vocal profile, with a particularly impressive middle register. His voice suggested an affinity with the heroic roles of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and he brought useful weight to the Greek commander. Last heard as Banco in Macbeth at Macerata last summer, Spanish bass‑baritone Simon Orfila portrayed Hièros with authority, investing the prophet with dignity and gravity.
Erika Rambaldoni’s choreography contributed to the production’s Hellenising aesthetic. The ballet, de rigueur in Parisian grand opéra in Rossini’s day, was—as usual—rather too long and, for most opera lovers, distinctly tedious. Its transformation into a nightmare in Pamyra’s mind, however, in which she herself participated, made it both relevant and considerably more appealing.
The reception was, with good reason, highly enthusiastic, particularly for the principal singers and Carlo Rizzi. Livermore, by contrast, encountered a more divided response, with approval mingling with dissent. The production was not a disaster, but it was undeniably a missed opportunity. Rather than compensating for Le Siège de Corinthe’s dramatic weaknesses relative to Maometto II, Livermore inadvertently accentuated them, privileging patriotic symbolism over the tragedy of Pamyra and reducing the conflict to an overly schematic opposition between the virtuous Greeks and the villainous Ottomans.
Ultimately, the evening confirmed the peculiar paradox of Le Siège de Corinthe. The work remained historically fascinating, musically impressive and politically resonant, yet it never quite matched the dramatic concentration of Maometto II. In transforming his Neapolitan tragedy into a French grand opéra monument, Rossini gained breadth, spectacle and public grandeur, but sacrificed something of the intimate cruelty that had made its predecessor so compelling. Pesaro’s performance, crowned by the extraordinary singing of Vasilisa Berzhanskaya, Maxim Mironov and Adrian Sâmpetrean, together with Carlo Rizzi’s authoritative conducting, made a persuasive case for the work’s continuing importance. Yet, ironically, the production also made the case for its limitations: for all its choruses, pageantry and political grandiloquence, Le Siège de Corinthe remained the more imposing but less penetrating sibling of Maometto II. What it gained in monumentality, it lost in humanity—and Livermore did little to disguise the deficit.
Ossama el Naggar
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