About the work
Ivanhoé is an 1826 pastiche opera assembled for the Théâtre de l'Odéon in Paris: music publisher Antonio Pacini, with Rossini's approval, combined music from Rossini's operas Semiramide, La Cenerentola, La gazza ladra and Tancredi into a new score; surviving manuscript fragments show that Rossini himself contributed a recitative and an orchestral introduction. The libretto by Émile Deschamps and Gabriel-Gustave de Wailly follows Walter Scott's novel Ivanhoe. Its premiere on 15 September 1826 came just three weeks before the premiere of Rossini's own reworked opera Le siège de Corinthe at the Académie royale de musique.
Plot
The plot follows Walter Scott's novel about the disinherited Saxon knight Wilfred of Ivanhoe, who returns from the Crusades in disguise, prevails at a tournament against Norman knights, and is caught between the Jewish Rebecca and the Saxon Rowena, against the backdrop of simmering conflict between Saxons and Norman conquerors.
Cultural significance
As a pastiche drawn from one of the era's most widely read novels, Ivanhoé introduced Rossini's music to a Parisian audience outside the Opéra and shows how popular his Italian operas already were in France; the work was also staged in London in 1829 under the title The Maid of Judah.