La Danza

La danza closes Les soirées musicales, the set of eight songs and four duets Rossini published in Paris in 1835 for the salons in which he then moved. Carlo Pepoli, who would later write the libretto of Bellini's I puritani, supplied the words: a tarantella danced under the moon at Naples, with the bell of the church calling the dancers on. Liszt transcribed it for piano twice, once in his Soirées musicales and again in the Venezia e Napoli set, and the song became better known in that form than in its own.