Gioacchino Rossini

Gioacchino Rossini is born in Pesaro, in the Papal State, on 29 February of 1792 from a musician father (Giuseppe Antonio Rossini) and a modiste but with good singing dowries mother (Anna Guidarini).
The young Rossini began since he was a child to dedicate himself to music receiving singing lessons, spinet and horn (from his father), preferring Mozart and Haydin compositions things that gave him the nickname "Tedeschino" (Young German). He even began to compose some sacred musics and when he was 13 he obtained the first prize at the grammar school with the cantata " Pianto d'Armonia per la morte di Orfeo".
In 1806 the company of Bologna Mombelli commissioned to this 14 years old talented boy the Opera "Demetrio e Polibio" that was never represented until 1812.
He had his debut in Venice, when he was 18, when it was performed at Teatro S. Moisè "La cambiale di Matrimonio" with a discreet success.
In the following two years the composing activity of Rossini was most intense and wrote seven works very with alternate results until making his debut on 26 September of 1812 at La Scala di Milano with "La Pietra del Paragone" that deserved 53 replicas.

The definitive consecration took place with the Opera "Tancredi" and "L'Italiana in Algeri" performed in Venice in the 1813 at Teatro la Fenice and Teatro S.Benedetto.
In May of 1815 Rossini leaves Bologna for Napoli on a suggestion of impresario Barbaja and here he writes "Elisabetta Regina d'Inghilterra" performed the same year with great success at Teatro San Carlo with Isabella Colbran in the role of Elisabetta. He presented in Rome "Torvaldo and Dorliska" that received poor enthusiasm, therefore on 20 February 1816 at Teatro Argentina di Napoli "Il Barbiere di Siviglia" that first is a fiasco(maybe even for the strong devotion of the Napoli citizens for Paisiello who had already composed a "Barbiere") but having a great success then in the rest of Italy.
For a couple of years Rossini went to and from Roma and Napoli performing "la Gazzetta", "Otello" with great success, "Cenerentola" (received coldly at the prima), "Armida" and "Adelaide di Borgogna" that didn't meet the favours of the public. Meanwhile he had newly a great success at La Scala di Milano with "La Gazza Ladra".

Portrait of Rossini (29Kb)

Rossini had a great reputation and in Napoli "Mosè in Egitto" is performed, while his native town asked him, for the opening of a new, to represent the "Gazza" that had a huge success. But in Pesaro Rossini got seriously ill and he recovered only after a long period of crisis following his parents in Bologna where he composed "Adina" that will be performed only in 1826 in Lisbon.
But Napoli asked for him and he came back composing between 1818 and 1819 "Ricciardo and Zoraide" and "Ermione" that was a clamorous fiasco.
Gained a very great success the Opera "Edoardo e Cristina" (pastiche of previous music) at Teatro S.Benedetto in Venezia.

Portrait of Rossini (24Kb)

Come back to Napoli full of honours he performed "La donna del Lago" that renewed totally the Dramatic Opera, but without obtaining a great success.
After the fiasco of "Bianca and Faliero" at La Scala his musical production reduces and executes the "Messa di Gloria" in the Church of S.Ferdinando and "Maometto II" at Teatro S.Carlo with large success.
In 1821 he was performed in Rome, at Teatro Argentina, "Matilde di Shabran" with Paganini as conductor.
In 1822 accepted offers from Paris and London and write the last Neapolitan Opera "Zelmira" that received a good success, then he married Isabella Colbran in Bologna and the day after Rossini left to Wien. Here he had great success performing his old Operas and seized the opportunity to meet the old and deaf composer Beethoven who didn't miss to pay compliment to him ("Don't try to write anything else than Opere buffe: trying to do something different would be against nature").
Releasing himself from the engagement undertaken with London he returned in Italy where in Venezia he had first a fiasco with the performance of "Maometto II", then a great one with "Semiramide" that had 28 replicas.
At the end of 1823 Rossini closed his Italian career and went to London where he received large profits and gifts without writing any new Opera.

Rossini accepted to become director of the Théâtre Italien in Paris where he executed in June of 1825 "Il viaggio a Reims" for the coronation of Charles X..
The creative prolific vein of Rossini was diminishing and began to re-perform at the Opéra old Operas (Maometto II that become "Le Siège de Corinthe" and "Moïse et Pharaon" adapted from Mosè in Egitto) and pastiches created from some of his works previous ("Ivanhoe") obtaining, especially with the first two, enthusiast success for the confluence of French tragédie with Italian melodrama.
In 1828, using part of the "Viaggio" and "Edoardo and Cristina", composed "Le Comte Ory", really new Opera comique, that gained a triumph at Opéra in Paris.
He refused some to gratifying offers from foreign countries and Italy deciding to stay in Paris where he signed a contract in which it was engaged to realize 5 Operas in ten years. The result was the "Guillaume Tell" that doesn't receive great success for the novelty of its style. But soon it had large consents and arrived in Italy (translated) as "Guglielmo Tell".
In 1831 He began to compose the "Stabat Mater" for the Archdeacon of Seville, but a large period of crisis made him ill. He met Olympe Pélissier, who took care of the composer, and felt in love for her. Then he legally divorced from Isabella Colbran and the "Stabat" (completed by Tadolini) was performed conducted by Donizetti.

His health progressively got worse and he was only able to compose some pure musical divertissement ("Soirées musicales") in a continuous search of tranquillity.
In 1846 married Olympe Pélissier and spent some years in Italy between Bologna (where he was director of the Musical Grammar school and victim of some protest episodes) and Firenze living one of the saddest and painful period of his life (like demonstrates the letter written to his friend Filippo Santocanale in February of '55), until deciding to leave definitively Italy to return to Paris in April of 1855.
The health of Rossini seemed getting better and composed some pieces for pianoforte and singing defined "Péchés de vieillesse" (among which the "Musique Anodyne" written for his wife). In 1860 he received the visit of Richard Wagner who played compliments for his "Guillaume".
In 1864 he composed the marvellous "Petite Messe Solennelle" that collected huge consents and large enthusiasms.
But in 1868 his health got worse drastically, having two operations.
On 13 November of 1868, at 11pm, Rossini died.
With a solemn funeral his body was buried in the cemetery of Père Lachaise beside Chopin and Bellini. At the death of Olympe Pélissier the Rossini's testament, that appoint the city of Pesaro as his heir, became executive.
In May of 1887 his body was brought to S.Croce in Firenze in a tomb beside those of large Italian artists like Michelangelo, Machiavelli, Foscolo, Alfieri, Galileo and Cherubini.

Caricature of Rossini (40Kb)