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What kind of music did Apollon Barret (1804-1879) play when he was called upon to perform a solo? This Aria di Bravura (c.1854) partly answers that question. Being principal oboist at Covent Garden's Royal Italian Opera, Barret simply copied the most important type of music heard in Italian opera, namely the scena.

Gioacchino Rossini's Una voce poco fà from Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816) is an excellent model that Barret could have followed. Beginning with a Ritornello for orchestra, the soprano enters with a short Cavatina. This is followed by a more elaborate Cabaletta, quicker in tempo and filled with difficult passage-work.

In Barret's Aria di Bravura, the Ritornello is followed by a Cavatina in binary form; a short cadenza is found at its conclusion. The Cabaletta is set out as an intriguing waltz in rounded binary form, and it includes several three-measure phrases in its initiating theme. A very short cadenza separates the binary form from a central Ritornello, which is given over to the orchestra. A recapitulation of the binary structure follows, and it features a complex cadenza near its end. In it, Barret descends to low A. Such a note is not present on any known oboe of the era, that is, unless the great man owned a special instrument made for him by Triébert.

Barret includes the following rubric at the bottom of the final page of the oboe part: NOTA. Les quatre notes enfermées dan ce signe (bracket) Si La Si Ut (close bracket) peuvent être supprimeés; that is, NOTE: The four note enclosed by the bracket: B A B and C#, should be supressed. I found it easier to change the low A to a C#. There are three other occasions where Barret indicates the low A, but in those cases the normal A1 is presented at the same time.

The piano-score from which I worked was published simultaneously by the houses of Triébert and Excoffon in Paris, and by the firm of Jullien in London about 1854. The orchestral parts were missing, but I was able to reconstruct the string parts without any complications.
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