Gioachino Rossini

The operatic canon owes its richest comic vein in no small measure to Gioachino Rossini, whose L'Italiana in Algeri, La gazza ladra, and, above all, Il barbiere di Siviglia share foundational status with the stage works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Giuseppe Verdi. Admiration for his music began in his adolescence and never faded until the day he died.

Both of Rossini’s parents earned their living in music: his father, a horn player, held a teaching post at Bologna’s Accademia Filharmonica, while his mother performed as a soprano despite lacking systematic instruction. The boy received his earliest lessons and encouragement at home before entering the Liceo Musicale in Bologna. Once he had completed his studies there, the Teatro San Moise in Venice commissioned his one-act comedy La cambiale di matrimonio. The following year, 1812, brought La pietra del paragone to La Scala in Milan, establishing the twenty-year-old musician as Italy’s leading composer.

A contract with the Neapolitan theaters drew Rossini southward in 1815; he remained in that city until 1822, writing nineteen operas in relative security and turning his primary attention to opera seria. Among these scores was Otello, created for the Teatro San Carlo. During the same period he met and later married the local soprano Isabella Colbran. Demand from other centers continued unabated, prompting him to supply Rome with the comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia in 1816 and La cenerentola the year after.

Rossini departed Naples in 1822 for an extended European tour that brought him immediate and widespread acclaim; even Beethoven, whose aesthetic stance differed sharply from his own, spoke of him with admiration. In 1823 the Teatro La Fenice in Venice commissioned the serious opera Semiramide, a work that enjoyed only modest contemporary success yet left several arias that singers still perform. Traveling by way of London, Rossini reached Paris in 1824, where he served as music director of the Théâtre Italien until 1826 and received additional commissions from the Paris Opéra. At thirty-seven he completed his final opera, Guillaume Tell, in 1829 and withdrew from the genre. The overture of that score has remained a concert staple and a clear continuation of Beethoven’s heroic manner. By the time of his retirement Rossini’s catalog comprised thirty-two operas, two symphonies, numerous cantatas, and a modest group of oratorios and chamber pieces.

After returning to Italy he became a widower in 1845; his marriage to Isabella Colbran had been unhappy. Shortly thereafter he wed Olympe Pelissier, who had previously been his mistress. In 1855 Rossini and his second wife settled in Passy, a suburb of Paris. There he devoted his final years to sacred music and to a series of short piano and vocal pieces, some of which he titled “sins of my old age.” Following his death he was interred in Père Lachaise cemetery beside Vincenzo Bellini, Luigi Cherubini, and Frédéric Chopin. In 1887 his remains were moved to Santa Croce in Florence during a ceremony witnessed by more than six thousand admirers.