[Sheet music]: Otello: Opera Seria ROSSINI, Gioachino Music

Stated "Nuova Edizione." Folio. 194pp. Text is in Italian. Half black leather over marbled paper covered boards, gilt tooling along the spine in six compartments with gilt ornamental devices and "Otello" in gilt, the textblock with yellow stained edges. Wear to the boards, edges, and spine, with some loss to some of the gilt, a small repair at the foot of the spine, front hinge strengthened, a dampstain to the front pastedown, and scattered foxing throughout, still a sound and very good copy. The complete opera featuring seven roles, a women's chorus, and a male chorus, plus piano accompaniment. Plate numbers 900 to 921. Rossini's operatic adaptation of William Shakespeare's *Othello*, written and produced seven decades before being overshadowed by Giuseppe Verdi's musical interpretation of the play. Though less celebrated today than Verdi's *Otello*, Rossini's adaptation was still groundbreaking for its time, with the third and final act moving away from the traditional opera seria style utilized in the first two acts. Writing for *NPR*, Bruce Scott describes the sound of the third act being as if, "Rossini seems to enter a whole new world of freely flowing dramatic expression, carried by intensely emotional music. Even the subject matter was daring. Early 19th-century operas almost always had happy endings, even if they had to be engineered using preposterous plot twists. But, as in Shakespeare's play, the end of Rossini's opera is both tragic and disturbing, even today." An early publication of this overlooked opera in a worn yet beautiful binding.