Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates/Robert Bruce

Gioacchino Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3 edit

Voting period is over. Please don't add any new votes. Voting period ends on 30 Aug 2020 at 23:54:25 (UTC)

Original – Act III, Scene 3 of Robert Bruce, as designed for its original performance. 500.

Reason: I'm feeling nostalgic for touring castles in the days before the plague, and (presuming La reine de Chypre passes), I'm due for my 500th featured picture, and wanted to do something that had meaning for me to fill its slot. So come with me to the world of Gioacchino Rossini's operas. The late 18th and early 19th century were kind of a weird time for operas. Hell, even at the end of the 19th century, England was translating Wagner's operas... into Italian for their London premières. Italian composers were writing works in Italian for French premières, but there was also a desire for a native-language operas that led to such things as Donizetti writing La fille du régiment in French. The thing is, though, the opera houses in France that performed in Italian only performed in Italian, and the ones that performed in French expected their operas to be in French.

...Which leads us to Rossini's last opera (of sorts). Léon Pillet, director of the Paris Opera, begged Rossini for a new opera in 1843, fourteen years after Rossini's last completed opera, William Tell. Rossini felt his health wasn't up to it, but suggested that La donna del Lago (1821) had never been performed well in Paris. Pillet thought it had been performed often enough, though, that audiences wouldn't come.

So he got a team together, and convinced Rossini to let the opera be adapted into a new French opera, eventually convincing him to let them use additional music from other operas. Rossini supervised its creation, but made Pillet's team do pretty much all the work. And hence, we have Robert Bruce, Rossini's sort-of-last opera.

Anyway! This is the setting for Act III, Scene 3, the ramparts of Sterling Castle, as designed for its première production.
Articles in which this image appears: Robert Bruce (opera)
FP category for this image: WP:FP/THEATRE
Creator: Charles-Antoine Cambon, restored by Adam Cuerden

Support as nominator – Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.4% of all FPs} 23:54, 20 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support I have fond memories of dancing a sixtyfoursome reel to pipes at the Argyll Ball at Stirling Castle in about 1969... And we were due to see Rossini at La Scala in the last week of March. Another year perhaps.Charlesjsharp (talk) 06:45, 21 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support (t · c) buidhe 11:14, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support. There's a spot against the right edge about half way down. MER-C 16:56, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
- Got it. Adam Cuerden ^(talk)_{Has about 7.4% of all FPs} 19:31, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Support. --Gnosis (talk) 04:04, 27 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Promoted File:Charles-Antoine Cambon - Set design for the première of Rossini's Robert Bruce, Act III, Scene 3.jpg --Armbrust ^{The Homunculus} 02:47, 31 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]