Rossini, Gioachino Antonio << roh SEE nee, `joh` ahk KEE noh ahn TAW nyoh >> (1792-1868), was perhaps the most popular and important Italian opera composer during the first half of the 1800’s. The Barber of Seville (1816) is probably the greatest comic opera ever written.
Loading the player...The Barber of Seville Overture
Rossini was born in Pesaro on Feb. 29, 1792, and received advanced musical training in Bologna. His second opera, La Cambiale di matrimonio (1810), made him an important force in Italian music, and was the first of his operas to be performed. For the next 13 years, Rossini wrote opera buffa (comic opera) and opera seria (serious opera), sometimes as many as three or four a year. The most popular ones include The Italian in Algiers (1813), The Turk in Italy (1814), Otello (1816), Cinderella (1817), Moses in Egypt (1818), The Lady of the Lake (1819), and Semiramide (1823). They are noted for their rich and catchy melodies, surging vitality, and expert vocal writing.
In 1824, Rossini moved to Paris, then the opera capital of the world. In 1826 and 1827, he revised two of his Italian operas for French words. He then composed—to French texts—the masterly comic Le Comte Ory (1828) and his serious masterpiece, William Tell (1829), which represented a high point in Rossini’s operatic style.
Loading the player...William Tell Overture
Rossini composed no operas after 1829, partly because he was often in poor health, and partly because he did not like the new operatic styles. His compositions after that year include the religious work Stabat Mater (1842) and many small instrumental and vocal pieces that he called Peches de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age). He died on Nov. 13, 1868. Rossini had intelligence, wit, and humor, and became a famous host while living in Paris.
See also Barber of Seville, The; Cenerentola, La.
