Nacqui all'affanno (La Cenerentola)

Rossini gave Cenerentola the last word and made it a display piece. The rondò that closes the opera turns forgiveness into coloratura — the heroine, no longer at the hearth, sings that she was born to sorrow and that the sorrow is over — and it asks of a mezzo everything the role has been saving up. Rossini wrote the opera in three weeks for Rome's Teatro Valle in 1817, dropping the fairy godmother and the slipper for a philosopher and a bracelet, and this final number is what audiences wait for.