Nineteenth-century Italy was rediscovering Catholic art, and it was during a trip to Spain that Rossini received a commission for a work based on the traditional liturgical text of the Stabat Mater.
Rossini began composing this Stabat Mater, but illness prevented him from completing the commission. He asked his friend Giovanni Tadolini to compose the four remaining movements.
Although the piece was distinctly different from Rossini's secular works, German critics criticized it for being "too secular, too sensual, too entertaining for a religious subject". In response, French historian Gustave Chouquet pointed out that "we must not forget that religion in the South is very different from what it is in the North".
For this occasion, and to continue the cross-border dynamic, the artistic director of the Orchestre Symphonique de Canet en Roussillon, François Ragot, invited the "Croscat" choir from Olot (Province of Girona), and entrusted the direction of this work to his Brazilian friend Claudio Suzin Rodriguez.