Stabat mater

Although long retired as an opera composer, by the time he began writing his Stabat Mater in 1831, Rossini squeezed every drop of drama from the medieval hymn to the Virgin Mary. He captures the desolation of Christ’s mother at the foot of the Cross in the work’s opening movement, setting the scene with a spellbinding orchestral introduction before a prayerful choir and solo quartet emerge from silence. While work on the score was interrupted by illness and only completed after a 10-year intermission, it nevertheless conveys the depth of Rossini’s faith and compassion with boundless conviction. Echoes of sacred music past sound in the opening of “Eja Mater, fons amoris” and again in the final “In sempiterna saecula” fugue. The tenor’s “Cujus animam”, often programmed as a free-standing recital showpiece, channels the anguish of a mother for her dying son with melodies that soar and sigh, while the meandering chromatic harmonies of the unaccompanied quartet, “Quando corpus morietur”, move from contemplating mortal decay to anticipating the glory of eternal life.