The Life of Rossini

Rossini was a very celebrated man fifty years ago. Forty-seven years ago he had already finished his Italian career. "Semiramide," the last opera he composed for Italy, was prod...

Although Rossini's artistic life did not number precisely the "three score and ten years" allotted to man, we must go back a full seventy years from the date of his last work to...

The first opera of Rossini's which became celebrated throughout Europe was "Tancredi," which in the present day seems just a little old-fashioned. In regard to the recitatives a...

In bringing forward Monteverde, Scarlatti, Durante, Logroscino, and Pergolese, Jomelli, Piccinni, Paisiello, and Cimarosa, as the founders of opera, one seems to be tracing oper...

New instruments have been introduced since Mozart's time. It has become the fashion still farther to shorten recitatives; the chorus has been made more prominent than ever in It...

We have seen that when Rossini's "Tancredi" was first brought out in London, Lord Mount-Edgcumbe did not know what to make of it, and thought Italian Opera was coming to an end;...

As Rossini found the opera seria of his day too serious, so he found the opera buffa too broadly comic. He was accused of treating tragic subjects melodramatically--which meant...

Rossini encountered no serious obstacles in his career. He was never crossed in love like Beethoven--indeed, in his numerous affairs of the heart, he seems always to have been m...

Rossini would have been amused if any one had written a book about him and his music entitled "Rossini and his Three Styles." He liked discussing the principles and also the pra...

Naples and Dresden had long been the two great operatic centres of Europe. For the sake of harmony and regularity, it is usual to mention Sebastian Bach as the founder of the Ge...

In _Elisabetta_ Mademoiselle Colbran obtained the first of the numerous triumphs for which she was to be indebted to Rossini. The work was founded on the subject of "Kenilworth,...

After the success of "Elisabetta," Rossini went to Rome, where he was engaged to write two works for the carnival of 1816. On the 26th of December, 1815, he produced at the Teat...

At Rome, where no opera reflecting directly or indirectly on the Roman Catholic religion and the rights of princes, or inculcating patriotism, or trifling with morality, or touc...

Rossini had engaged to supply two operas for Rome, both to be produced during the carnival of 1816. The first, "Torvaldo e Dorliska," was duly finished and brought out at the co...

First representations are a composer's battles. Rossini's hardest fight was at the first representation of the "Barber of Seville." For some reason not explained the Roman publi...

While Rossini was still at Rome the San Carlo theatre was destroyed by fire, but Barbaja's fortune was not invested in one opera-house alone. He had two theatres in hand, and th...

"La Cenerentola" belongs to the composite order of operatic architecture. But no canon has been set against self-robbery; and Rossini, who never professed any theory on the subj...

The Patriarch of Moscow, arrayed in all his splendour, was about to lay the foundation stone of a new church, when his consecrated trowel, formed of massive gold, could nowhere...

After the immense success of "La Gazza Ladra," Rossini returned to Naples. It will be remembered that while he was at Rome superintending the production of "Il Barbiere di Sivig...

Barbaja had further engaged the celebrated Porto, to whom, to Benedetti, and to basses and baritones in general, Rossini rendered an important service by composing the parts of...

When Rossini was thirty-seven years of age he had written thirty-seven operas, without counting those enlarged editions of former works, "Moïse" and "Le Siège de Corinthe." Of t...

It was the fate of Rossini to have to write a certain number of complimentary cantatas, two of which were composed and executed in the year 1819; one in honour of the King of Na...

In proportion as Rossini elevated and enlarged his style, in proportion as he aimed at rendering his works truly dramatic, so did his success diminish. The grand combinations in...

"La Donna del Lago" was Rossini's Italian "Tell" in more than one respect. As the composer was only twenty-seven years of age, and had not even begun to make his fortune when it...

Rossini until after his marriage never left Italy. But he then made up his mind to travel, and one journey leads naturally to another. The composer's visit to Vienna procured hi...

During that season of 1824, which, at the King's Theatre was so "successful," that Mr. Ebers lost only seven thousand pounds, there certainly was no lack of money among the amat...

Rossini's journey to London was not merely an excursion from Paris. But he started from Paris to come to London; he returned to Paris as soon as he had made his seven thousand p...

"Now I think of it," said Rossini, a great many years afterwards, to Ferdinand Hiller, "what was not written against me when I went to Paris! Old Berton even made verses on me,...

The ingenious Berton, in his anti-Rossinian pamphlet entitled "De la Musique mécanique et de la Musique philosophique," relates how he once asked Maelzel, the metronomist, wheth...

Rossini's engagement as director of the Théâtre Italien came to an end in 1826; but he continued to take part in its management, and rendered great services by his recommendatio...

Before attacking "Guillaume Tell," Rossini retired into the country; and this time devoted, not thirteen days to the production of the entire work, as in the case of that comic...

The reason why Rossini, after producing "Guillaume Tell," ceased finally to write for the stage is still a mystery, which has been rendered only more mysterious by the various a...

Rossini, though he wrote no more for the stage, did not all at once cease to write. In 1832, a distinguished Spaniard, Don Varela, prevailed upon him to compose a "Stabat Mater,...