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"Lady Mary Wortley," Jervas wrote to the poet, probably in 1715 or early in the following year, "ordered me by express this morning, cedente Gayo et ridente Fortescuvio, to send you a letter, or some other proper notice, to come to her on Thursday about five, which I suppose she meant in the evening."
A reconciliation is easily effected, a notary is at hand, and they are married just as Bartolo makes his appearance with officers to arrest the Count. Mutual explanations occur, however, and all ends happily. The first act opens after a short chorus, with the serenade, "Ecco ridente in cielo," the most beautiful song in the opera.
Hoping that it may bring him an opportunity for a glance, mayhap a word with his inamorata, Amaviva follows the advice given by Sir Proteus to Thurio in "The Two Gentlemen of Verona"; he visits his lady's chamber window, not at night, but at early dawn, with a "sweet concert," and to the instruments of Fiorello's musicians tunes "a deploring dump." It is the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo."
When he left her the night before, she had gone again to the piano, her fingers had fluttered like butterflies over the keys, then in answer to some strain, an aria from the Regina di Golconda had visited her the Bel paese, ciel ridente, which she had hummed softly to herself, unconscious of any significance in the words.
The next day he wrote the cavatina "Ecco ridente in cielo" to take the place of Garcia's unlucky Spanish song, borrowing the air from his own "Aureliano," composed two years before, into which it had been incorporated from "Ciro," a still earlier work. When night came, he feigned illness so as to escape the task of conducting. By that time his enemies had worn themselves out.
Di mediocre statura, gracile in aspetto, di faccia alquanto lunga, il naso profilato e bello, li capelli aurei, gli occhi bianchi, la bocca alquanto grande con li denti candidissimi; la gola schietta e bianca ornata con decente valore, ed in essere continuamente allegra e ridente. See Lucrezia Borgia in Ferrara. Ferrara, 1867. Agnolo Firenzuola, vol. i. Della perfetto bellezza di una donna.
There may be a more smiling hill-top than "La Collina Ridente" somewhere on the Southern California edge of the Pacific Ocean, but deep down in my heart I don't believe that there is. It is just the right size hill-top except when I first began to drive the motor, and then it seemed a trifle small for turning around.
DEAR SIR: The last time I had the pleasure of see you in your place, Villa Collina Ridente, you exclaimed with a melancholic voice, "Only poppies and mignonette came out of the wild flower seeds." "So it is," said I in the same tune of voice. Time proved we was both wrong; many other flowers made their retarded appearance, so deserving the name of wild flower garden....
In the scene beneath Rosina's balcony Garcia introduced a Spanish air of his own; but it failed, and before the second performance Rossini wrote the beautiful cavatina, "Ecco ridente il cielo" in its place, the melody borrowed from the opening chorus of his "Aureliano," and that in turn from his "Ciro in Babilonia."
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