After Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Petite Messe solennelle is Gioacchino Rossini’s most celebrated composition. Composed 1862-64, the highly unusual Petite Messe solennelle comes from...

After Il barbiere di Siviglia, the Petite Messe solennelle is Gioacchino Rossini’s most celebrated composition. Composed 1862-64, the highly unusual Petite Messe solennelle comes from Rossini’s final creative period, divided from his career as an operatic composer by an interval of nearly thirty years and by a radical questioning of the purpose of composition, which was accompanied by an equally spectacular renewal of his musical style. The Petite Messe solennelle was founded as homage to Louis Niedermeyer (d. 1861), Swiss musician and close friend of Rossini’s, as recent research has established. For this live recording from 2014, the forces of the orchestre de chambre de Paris and conductor Ottavio Dantone were joined by four outstanding vocal soloists: Soprano Julia Lezhneva, Contralto Delphine Galou, tenor Michael Spyres and bass Alexander Vinogradov.