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Sooner or later every composer has to deal with a deadline. Gioacchino Rossini shared some of his trade secrets in a letter that shows his boisterous sense of humor:1
Wait until the evening before the performance. Nothing stirs up a person’s enthusiasm so much as pure necessity, a copyist waiting for your work and the pleadings of an impresario at the end of his rope, tearing out his hair by the handful.2 In my day in Italy all impresarios were bald by the age of thirty.
I wrote the overture to Othello in a little room in the Palazzo Barbaja where the baldest and fiercest of the directors had shut me in by force with nothing but a plateful of macaroni, vowing not to let me out until I had written the last note.3
I wrote the overture to La Gazza Ladra on the very day of the premiere, beneath the roof of La Scala, where I had been imprisoned by the director and put under guard by four stage carpenters who were under orders to throw my manuscript out the window, page by page to the copyists, who were down below waiting to copy it out. If the pages of music failed to come out, their orders were to throw me out.
For The Barber of Seville I did better. I didn’t write any overture at all. I just borrowed one I had designated for a semi-serious opera called Elisabetta. The public was perfectly satisfied. I wrote the overture to Le Comte Ory while standing with my feet in the water, fishing, in the company of Signor Aguado, who was talking about Spanish finance. I wrote the William Tell overture under similar circumstances. For Moise I didn’t write one at all. S
1. Gioacchino Rossini: 吉奥阿基诺·罗西尼（1792—1868），意大利著名歌剧作曲家。代表作品有《塞维利亚的理发师》、《威廉·退尔》等；trade secret: （行业）秘密；boisterous: 狂闹的，猛烈的。
2. stir up: 激起；impresario: （剧院、音乐厅等的）演出主办人，演出经理；at the end of one’s rope: 走投无路，失去耐性。
3. overture: 开幕曲，序曲；macaroni: 通心粉。
或迟或早，每个作曲家都会遇到如何应付交稿期的情况。吉奥阿基诺·罗西尼在一封信中分享了这个行业秘密。从信中可以看出罗西尼狂放的幽默感：
要一直等到演出前的傍晚才开始创作。没有什么能够像纯粹的需要那么强烈地挑起人的热情，一个抄写员等着你的作品，一个走投无路的经理人对你苦苦哀求，急得大把大把地抓头发。我在意大利时发现，所有的经理人在30岁时都已经谢顶了。
我在帕拉热巴巴加的一间小屋子里写《奥赛罗》的序曲，那个最秃最暴烈的剧院经理强行把我关在里面，什么都没有，就是一大盘通心粉。他发誓，我不写完最后一个音符，就甭想出来！
《贼鹊》首演的当天，我在斯卡拉剧院里为这部歌剧写序曲。我被剧院经理囚禁在那里，四个舞台道具师奉命当起了警卫。他们接到命令，将我写的稿子一页一页地扔到窗外，由几个等候在外面的抄写员火速抄写出来。老板命令他们，如果我没有把稿子写出来，就把我从窗户扔出去。
到《塞维利亚的理发师》时，我幸运得多了。我压根就没有写任何序曲。我只是把以前写给不太重要的歌剧《伊丽莎白》的序曲移花接木。观众非常满意。我写《罗伊伯爵》序曲时，站在水里，一边钓鱼一边写，西格罗·阿古多在旁边陪着，他谈论着西班牙的金融状况。我在相似的环境下写出了《威廉·退尔》序曲。而《莫伊斯》，我一个音符还没写呢。S
译者简介
李波，男，汉族，祖籍山西左权，上世纪60年代末生于四川广元。曾京漂八年从事写作与翻译。2007年移居美国，和太太Kimberley居住在威斯康星州麦迪逊。
主要作品：合著《酷美语》（两册含光盘?外研社），译著《音乐启蒙书》（四卷?中央编译）、《音乐的希望》（三卷?北大出版社）、长篇小说《我在北京有张床》（即出）、《美国处男》（知识出版社）、《回头无岸》（中国电影），文化评论《中国食文化批判》（华龄出版社）、《口腔里的中国人》（东方出版中心）、《吃垮中国》（光明日报），杂文集《狗眼看世界》（中国友谊），社会评论《老板是靠不住的》（西苑）