Gioacchino Rossini

I

Introduction

Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868), Italian composer, the most successful opera composer of his time. Rossini composed 39 operas, beginning with Demetrio e Polibio (1806) and ending with Guillaume Tell (William Tell, 1829). He was outstanding at writing opera buffa (comic opera); his Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816) is probably the best-known comic opera of all time. He was one of the three great 19th-century exponents of the bel canto style, which emphasizes beauty of melodic line, rather than excessive drama and emotion. The other great bel canto composers, Gaetano Donizetti and Vincenzo Bellini, worked in Rossini’s shadow.

Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born in Pesaro, Italy, to a horn player (his father) and a singer (his mother). His parents toured during his childhood and he received practically no musical training until the age of 14, when he entered the Liceo Musicale (now the Conservatorio) in Bologna. He remained there until 1810, studying cello, counterpoint, and the fugue. That year his first composition of importance, a one-act operatic farce La Cambiale di matrimonio (Marriage by Promissory Note), was produced at Venice. A succession of similar pieces followed. Through his parents’ connections he managed to have his early works produced in northern Italian theaters.

II

Early Success

In 1813 Rossini wrote the two operas destined to establish his fame. Rossini’s first serious opera, Tancredi (1813), was based on Gerusalemme liberata (Jerusalem Delivered) by 16th-century Italian poet Torquato Tasso. It premiered successfully at La Fenice theater in Venice. Two months later the comic opera L’Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Woman in Algiers, 1813) took first Venice and later the whole of northern Italy by storm. His next several operas were less successful. Even the attractive and amusing Il Turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy, 1814), a kind of pendant to L’Italiana in Algeri, failed to enchant audiences.

In 1815 Rossini was commissioned to write an opera for the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. The opera was Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra (Elizabeth, Queen of England, 1815), an elaborate affair specially written for Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran, who was highly popular in Naples. Rossini remained in Naples until 1822, writing operas for the Teatro San Carlo as well as for other opera houses in Italy. Colbran, whom he married shortly before leaving Naples, sang the leading roles in a number of the operas he wrote during this period.

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Rossini’s most popular opera, The Barber of Seville, was written in less than three weeks and first produced in Rome in 1816. He chose for it a subject already used in an extremely popular opera of the same name written in 1782 by Italian composer Giovanni Paisiello. Figaro, the barber of the title, manages to prevent the aged Don Bartolo from marrying Rosina, his pretty, young ward, and to further Rosina’s courtship by the eligible, young Count Almaviva. The witty and charming opera contains delightful ensembles for multiple voices; bubbly, inspired melodies; and spirited orchestral writing. However, its first performance was a spectacular failure, to which the jeers and hisses of Paisiello’s partisans contributed. But the sparkle and wit of the opera soon made it a universal favorite.

Later in 1816 Rossini produced the opera for which he was perhaps most esteemed by his contemporaries: Otello, an adaptation of the tragic play Othello by William Shakespeare. His next opera, La Cenerentola (Cinderella, 1817), failed at its first performances but later met Rossini’s predictions for success and was performed in London, England, in 1820 and in New York City in 1825. Although forgotten for many years, the opera reestablished itself in the affections of operagoers in the last half of the 20th century. La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie, 1817), which was extremely successful at the time, is by contrast nearly forgotten today, apart from its overture.

During the next five years, from 1818 to 1823, Rossini wrote a great number of operas, most of which are considered of little importance. Two operas produced for Naples are of great interest, however. In 1818 Rossini wrote Mosè in Egitto (Moses in Egypt), which triumphed all over Europe. It features magnificent choruses as well as a celebrated prayer for delivery from Egypt, which is sung by Moses and the Israelites. Semiramide (1823), produced for Venice, was hailed at the time as the high point of Rossini’s achievement. Its success was equally brilliant outside Italy, making him beyond question the outstanding opera composer of the day. Afterward Rossini never wrote another opera for Italy. Semiramide was also the last opera he wrote for his wife, who soon retired from the stage.

Rossini traveled to Paris and London in 1823 and received an invitation from French king Charles X to become director of the Théâtre Italien in Paris, with responsibilities for producing Italian operas and for composing a new opera every other year. He took over administration of the theater in 1824 and worked hard to raise the standard of singing. His Le Comte Ory (Count Ory, 1828), written for the theater, is a charming operetta. Next came Guillaume Tell (William Tell, 1829), after the play Wilhelm Tell by German dramatist Friedrich von Schiller. The opera was acclaimed by musicians and critics as a masterpiece but less warmly received by the public, which found it excessively long and cold. The opera’s second act contains some of Rossini’s finest music. Donizetti reportedly later said, “God wrote the second act.”

III

Later Years

After William Tell Rossini wrote no more operas, although he was only 37 and lived another 40 years. No one knows for certain why he stopped composing at the height of his success, although many explanations have been offered. Some have ascribed it to dislike of the rising dominance of German composer Giacomo Meyerbeer in the Paris opera world; others to Rossini’s resentment at the French government’s efforts to cancel his contract after a revolution in 1830 toppled Charles X. Still others believe progressive ill health was involved, and a few assume laziness. What is known is that he intended to write another opera after William Tell based on Faust, a drama by German writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe. It is also known that his health deteriorated after 1827, slowly at first and later with alarming rapidity.

From 1830 to 1855 Rossini lived primarily in Italy, at first in Bologna and after 1848 in Florence. A visit to Madrid, Spain, in 1831 inspired his Stabat Mater, which was completed in 1842. In 1832 he met Olympe Pelissier, with whom he fell in love. After the death in 1845 of his wife, from whom he had separated, he married Pelissier. Rossini wrote some songs after that and one more significant work. The Petite Messe Solonnelle (Solemn Little Mass, 1863), his last work, is neither little nor especially solemn, and it contains some beautiful music. During his last decade Rossini wrote many short and humorous piano pieces, which he jokingly called Péchés de viellesse (Sins of Old Age). He did not publish these pieces, and most of them remained unknown until the 1950s. Rossini lived in Paris from 1855 until his death.

IV

Evaluation

Rossini’s operas were the last and best in the Italian opera buffa, or comic opera, style. Typically light and lively, their music is notable for its high degree of comic characterization. Rossini used the highly artistic bel canto style to fashion bright melodies, which the singers could deliver with brilliant effects and stirring expression. Although his music was written to showcase singers’ vocal abilities, he wrote out the embellishments—trills and runs—that bel canto singers had previously added on their own, thus ensuring that what they sang was his music. He abandoned the earlier practice of unaccompanied recitative (speech) in opera and added string-instrument or orchestral accompaniment to achieve a continuous musical effect. The statement “Give me a laundry-list and I’ll set it to music,” attributed to Rossini, underscores the speed and ease with which he composed.

Rossini’s reputation declined after his death, and his operas, viewed as lightweight confections, fell from fashion. During the 20th century his reputation steadily rose, and by the last decades of the century opera enthusiasts had begun to rediscover the inspired music of his serious operas, such as Tancredi and William Tell.

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