Maometto II, one of the greatest and most complex structurally of all of Rossini's serious operas, premiered December 3, 1820. It was the penultimate opera written for the Neapolitan stage by Rossini, and well beyond the grasp of the Naples audiences. The orchestrations are rich and complex, and the forms all original and dramatic. Thematic unity holds the opera together through long stretches and disparate pieces. Rossini is able to take similar thematic material and transform it into new situations and occasions throughout the opera. Although not the box office hit that some of his other operas were, it proved to be a valuable work to Rossini, for he rewrote it twice into simpler yet highly successful operas. It became Le Siege de Corinthe for his Paris Opera debut and, in 1823, was rewritten for the Venetian stage as well. In both the Paris version and the original, Neapolitan opera, the Turks are victorious and the Venetians vanquished. The ending is tragic and the scope of the opera remains grand. For Venice, Rossini altered the work not only into a simpler structural conception, but also into a lighter opera, in which the Venetians are victorious and the ending is a happy one.

The opera is conceived on a exalted scale. Not only are the emotional stakes of the individual characters high, but the settings are rich and exotic, the vocal display full of splendor, and the music appealing. There is rich use of chorus, and a huge brass section made up of four horns, two trumpets, three trombones, and a serpentone. There is a second band that plays on-stage, an elaborate percussion section, harp, strings, and woodwinds. Rossini orchestrated each piece individually, so that a different set of timbres and sounds provides different dramatic contexts. No set forms are used; rather the forms are adapted to help shape the drama. At one point in Act I, Rossini turns a group of pieces into a Terzettone, which means a "Fat" trio, or ensemble piece. He unifies this "trio" through scene changes, and has it end with a dramatic shift into the dominant of the key of the piece that follows. This turns out to be a dramatic cavatina and chorus for Maometto and his soldiers. There is a shift in key, a shift in vocal tessitura, as Maometto's bass voice takes over, and a shift in content, as Maometto sings of his coming victories and future supremacy as a ruler.

The initial cast of Maometto II was a stellar one, and included Isabella Cobran as Anna, Filippo Galli as Maometto II, and Adelaide Comelli as Calbo. The love story is set against the historic background of the wars between the Turks and Venetians in the fifteenth century. The four characters include father, suitor, lover, and daughter, in a typical struggle between love and duty. Anna, the daughter, must choose between loyalty towards her father and country and her love for Maometto, the Turkish prince. Her father wishes her to marry the Venetian general Calbo, thus mixing the love intrigue with the political intrigue of the war. The highly poetic libretto was adapted by Cesare della Valle from his own verse drama, Anna Erizo, also of 1820.

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