Il viaggio a Reims
opera by Gioachino Rossini
Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro (The Journey to Reims, or The Hotel of the Golden Fleur-de-lis) is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts, by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi, based in part on the 1807 novel Corinne ou l'Italie by Germaine de Staël.
Rossini's last opera in the Italian language (all of his later works were in French) premiered under the title Le voyage à Reims, ou l'Hôtel du Lys-d'Or. It was commissioned to celebrate the coronation of French King Charles X in Reims in May 1825 and has been acclaimed as one of Rossini's finest compositions. A demanding work, it requires 14 soloists (three sopranos, one contralto, two tenors, four baritones, and four basses). At its premiere, it was sung by the greatest voices of the day.
Since the opera was written for a specific occasion, with a plot about European aristocrats, officers – and one poetess – en route to join in the French coronation festivities that the opera itself was composed for, Rossini never intended it to have a life beyond a few performances in Paris. He later re-used about half of the music in Le comte Ory.
Il viaggio a Reims does not have an overture. Its so-called overture, derived from a set of dances in Le siège de Corinthe (1826), one of which Rossini had reworked from the dances in the finale to Il viaggio a Reims, is a twentieth-century invention or an erroneous attribution. It was published in Milan, in 1938, in a revision by Giuseppe Piccioli, which was first performed in the Teatro alla Scala, on 5 November 1938, conducted by Richard Strauss.
“Il viaggio a Reims” enters the record as opera by Gioachino Rossini. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what viaggio, Reims and opera can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Attribution, date and provenance are strongest when supported by the original work, a catalogue record and documented transmission. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q470983. VIAF identifies the subject as 178670928. The Library of Congress control number is n86856563. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1807, 1825, 1826 and 1938.
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