Belshazzar's famous feast, and some potted history derived from Herodotus about the fall of Belshazzar [Baldassare] and the rise of Ciro, a Persian king temporarily at the mercy of Belshazzar, are the stuff of Francesco Aventi's libretto for Ciro in Babilonia. Rossini wrote the opera during the early part of 1812 as an act of compliance with the ban on secular stage entertainments during Lent. He was to do likewise in Naples in March 1818; though as Bruno Cagli somewhat despondently notes in his long and interesting booklet essay: ''the dizzy heights of Mose in Egitto are very far away [in Ciro in Babilonia]''. Certainly, Rossini thought the piece a failure and the autograph manuscript has gone missing, making reconstruction a trifle hazardous. All power to the elbow of the Teatro Chiabrera, therefore, for mounting this theatre revival, and to Hunt Productions for putting it on to a pair of exceptionally clear, well-balanced and well-filled CDs.
The opera itself is not without its attractions. Many of the solo arias have a gentle charm, tokens of what Stendhal would later call Rossini's candeur virginale. Nor is it entirely lacking in dramatic potential, particularly in Act 2; though much of the time, it must be said, the potential remains just that. Moments of actual dramatic intensity are few and far between. Rossini's principal problem—exacerbated by the librettist's evident inexperience—is his failure to get any kind of purchase on the structure. Act 1, in particular, tends to lapse into secco recitative or yet another static number at the very point where in the Venetian farse of the same period Rossini was engineering a central ensemble of confusion.
The cast of this stage revival is generally accomplished, stage and audience noise agreeably unobtrusive, and the recording splendidly sharp-eared. The orchestral detailing is a particular joy, with Carlo Rizzi—rapidly becoming a favoured Rossini conductor in the UK as well as in Italy—drawing some delightful playing from what sounds like a chamber-size San Remo Sinfonica.
Unfortunately, the Italian libretto lacks an English translation (and at one point confuses Coro and Ciro), but there is at least a plot summary to help us follow the machinations of this Baylonian forebear of Saddam Hussein. I can't imagine that in the future we are going to be flooded out with recordings of Ciro in Babilonia, not even during the 1992 bicentenary of Rossini's birth. So Rossinians should probably do what they have got used to doing over the years: hurry whilst stocks last.'