Le siège de Corinthe

Le siège de Corinthe (The Siege of Corinth) is an opera in three acts by Gioachino Rossini set to a French libretto by Luigi Balocchi and Alexandre Soumet, which was based on the reworking of some of the music from the composer's 1820 opera for Naples, Maometto II, the libretto of which was written by Cesare della Valle.

Le siège was Rossini's first French opera (known also in its Italian version as L'assedio di Corinto) and was first given at the Salle Le Peletier of the Paris Opéra on 9 October 1826

The opera commemorates the siege and ultimate destruction of the town of Missolonghi in 1826 by Turkish troops during the ongoing Greek War of Independence (1821–1829). The same incident – condemned throughout Western Europe for its cruelty – also inspired a prominent painting by Eugène Delacroix (Greece Expiring on the Ruins of Missolonghi), and was mentioned in the writings of Victor Hugo. The reference to Corinth is an example of allegory, although Sultan Mehmed II had indeed besieged the city in the 1450s. Lord Byron's 1816 poem The Siege of Corinth has little, if any, connection with the opera as to its content.

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