The “Duetto buffo di due gatti” (humorous duet for two cats) is a performance piece for two sopranos and piano. Often performed as a comical concert encore, it consists entirely of the repeated word miau (“meow”) sung by the singers. It is sometimes performed by a soprano and a tenor, or a soprano and a bass.There’s no doubting the comical nature of the music – as the ‘meows’ slowly grow over solemn chords in the piano. And in true Rossini style, the meows grow in virtuosity. Just like they do on street roofs at 2.00am in the morning.
While the piece is typically attributed to Gioachino Rossini, it was not actually written by him, but is instead a compilation written in 1825 that draws principally on Rossini’s 1816 opera Otello. Hubert Hunt claims that the compiler was Robert Lucas de Pearsall, who for this purpose adopted the pseudonym “G. Berthold”.
In order of appearance, the piece consists of: the “Katte-Cavatine” by the Danish composer C. E. F. Weyse. Then part of the duet “No, non temer, serena” for Rodrigo and Iago in act 1 of Otello, there belonging to the words “Se uniti negli affanni noi fummo un tempo insieme” etc. Finally part of the cabaletta to the aria “Ah, come mai non senti”, sung by Rodrigo in the second act of the same opera.
This is actually not the only cat duet in classical music: nearly six decades after the death of Rossini, Maurice Ravel included a seductive feline duet—like its predecessor, entirely on the syllable “miau”—in his one-act opera L’enfant et les sortilèges. That version is slow and sensuous, whereas the nineteenth-century duet moves from a grand, stately “miau” to music of a bouncier character, leading to charming bits of florid singing in the final section of the duet.
