Ermione
tragic opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini
Ermione (1819) is a tragic opera (azione tragica) in two acts by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Andrea Leone Tottola, based on the play Andromaque by Jean Racine.
Performance history
19th century
Ermione was first performed at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, on 27 March 1819. For reasons that are as yet unclear, the opera was withdrawn on 19 April after only seven performances, and was not seen again until over a hundred years after Rossini's death. One possible explanation for its failure might be Rossini's choice to renounce the use of secco recitative in favour of accompanied declamation and to connect each closed number to the next in a manner reminiscent of Gluck's French operas and of Spontini (the latter was also to have a huge influence on Weber's Euryanthe, four years later).
Despite the opera's failure, Rossini seemed to be quite fond of this work and kept its manuscript, along with a few others from his Neapolitan years, until his death. The autograph score was then delivered by the widow, Olympe Pélissier, to Eugène Lecomte who entrusted it to the Bibliothèque Musée de l'Opéra de Paris. Eventually, a concert performance was given in Siena in August 1977.
In old age, when asked if he would have liked Ermione to be translated and produced on French stages, the composer is reported to have replied: "It's my little Italian Guillaume Tell; and it will not see the light of day until after my death."
20th century and beyond
The first modern staging was at the Rossini Opera Festival in Pesaro on 22 August 1987, with Montserrat Caballé, Marilyn Horne, Chris Merritt and Rockwell Blake. In Britain, a concert performance took place at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on 10 April 1992, and the first staging was at Glyndebourne on 22 May 1995. In the US, a concert performance was given at the San Francisco Opera on 26 June 1992, and the opera was first staged by Opera Omaha on 11 September 1992 in a production by Jonathan Miller.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Ermione” is tragic opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Ermione, tragic and opera, not as a finished interpretation.
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Object files, edition statements, performance records and contemporary criticism preserve different stages of the work’s history. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q936702. VIAF identifies the subject as 180629187. The Library of Congress control number is n79008050. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1819, 1977, 1987 and 1992.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ermione” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.