Tu che accendi questo core

TANCREDI
Melodramma eroico in 2 atti
Composer: Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868)
Libretto: Gaetano Rossi after Voltaire’s ‘Tancrède’ (1760)
First performance: Teatro La Fenice, Venice, 6 February 1813

SETTING: Syracuse, 1005

PLOT: Tancredi is a soldier who was banished from Syracuse, but has returned in disguise to help defend his city from invading Saracens. He loves Amenaide, daughter of Argirio, who wants her to marry Orbazzano to repair the rift between their families. At the wedding ceremonies, Orbazzano refuses to marry Amenaide and denounces her as a traitor; he produces a letter Amenaide had written to Tancredi (but not including his name), and claims that she sent it to Solamir, the Saracen leader, inviting him to (capture) the city. Amenaide is publicly denounced and thrown into prison. Tancredi defeats Orbazzano in a trial by combat, but still believes Amenaide guilty. The original version of the opera ends happily: the dying Solamir tells Tancredi that Amenaide is innocent, and the lovers are reunited. In the Ferrara ending, Tancredi is mortally wounded in battle.

No. 7 – Scena e Cavatina: ‘Tu che accendi questo core… Di questi palpiti’
Tancredi (one of Rossini’s military men, played by a woman in armour) arrives by boat on Sicily. He will defend his native city of Syracuse against the Saracens, and looks forward to seeing his beloved Amenaide– not knowing that her father wants her to marry another.

Tancredi (contralto): Ewa Podleś

Conductor: Alberto Zedda
Capella Brugensis & Collegium Instrumentale Brugense
Paris, 1994