Gioacchino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (
February 29,
1792 –
November 13,
1868) was an
Italian musical composer who wrote more than 30
operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. His best known works include
Il barbiere di Siviglia (
The Barber of Seville), and
Guillaume Tell (
William Tell) (the end of the
overture is popularly known for being the signature tune for
The Lone Ranger). His first name is usually spelled as
Gioacchino but currently the
Rossini Foundation uses
Gioachino.
[http://www.fondazionerossini.org/eng/set.htm]Rossini was born into a family of musicians in
Pesaro, a small town on the
Adriatic coast of
Italy. His father Giuseppe was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses, his mother Anna a singer and baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's band.
Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French, and welcomed
Napoleon's troops when they arrived in Northern Italy. This became a problem when in
1796, the
Austrians restored the old regime. Rossini's father was sent to prison, and his wife took him to
Bologna, earning her living as lead singer at various theatres of the
Romagna region, where she was ultimately joined by her husband. During this time, he was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who was unable to effectively control the boy.
He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher, while his father played the horn in the bands of the theatres at which his mother sang. The boy had three years instruction in the harpsichord from Prinetti of
Novara, but Prinetti played the scale with two fingers only, combined his profession of a musician with the business of selling liquor, and fell asleep while he stood, so that he was a fit subject for ridicule by his critical pupil.
He was taken from Prinetti and apprenticed to a smith. In Angelo Tesei he found a congenial master, and learned to sight-read, to play accompaniments on the
pianoforte, and to sing well enough to take solo parts in the church when he was ten years of age. At thirteen he appeared at the theatre of the Commune in Paër's
Camilla — his only public appearance as a singer (
1805). He was also a capable horn player in the footsteps of his father.
In
1807 the young Rossini was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre P. S. Mattei, and soon after to that of Cavedagni for the cello at the Conservatorio of Bologna. He learned to play the cello with ease, but the pedantic severity of Mattei's views on counterpoint only served to drive the young composer's views toward a freer school of composition. His insight into orchestral resources is generally ascribed not to the strict compositional rules he learned from Mattei, but to knowledge gained independently while scoring the quartets and symphonies of
Haydn and
Mozart. At Bologna he was known as "il Tedeschino" ("the Little German") on account of his devotion to Mozart.
Through the friendly interposition of the Marquis Cavalli, his first opera,
La Cambiale di Matrimonio, was produced at Venice when he was a youth of eighteen. But two years before this he had already received the prize at the Conservatorio of Bologna for his cantata
Il pianto d'Armonia sulla morte d'Orfeo. Between
1810 and
1813, at Bologna,
Rome,
Venice and
Milan, Rossini produced operas of varying success. All memory of these works is eclipsed by the enormous success of his opera
Tancredi.
The
libretto was an arrangement of
Voltaire's tragedy by A. Rossi. Traces of Paër and
Paisiello were undeniably present in fragments of the music. But any critical feeling on the part of the public was drowned by appreciation of such melodies as "Di tanti palpiti . . . Mi rivedrai, ti rivèdrô," which became so popular that the Italians would sing it in crowds at the law courts until called upon by the judge to desist.
Rossini continued to write operas for
Venice and
Milan during the next few years, but their reception was tame and in some cases unsatisfactory after the success of
Tancredi. In
1815 he retired to his home at Bologna, where Barbaja, the impresario of the
Naples theatre, concluded an agreement with him by which he was to take the musical direction of the
Teatro San Carlo and the
Teatro Del Fondo at Naples, composing for each of them one opera a year. His payment was to be 200 ducats per month; he was also to receive a share of Barbaja's other business, popular gaming-tables, amounting to about 1000 ducats per annum. This was an amazingly lucrative arrangement for any professional musician at that time.
Some older composers in Naples, notably
Zingarelli and
Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer; but all hostility was made futile by the enthusiasm which greeted the court performance of his
Elisabetta regina d'Inghilterra, in which Isabella Colbran, who subsequently became the composer's wife, took a leading part. The libretto of this opera by Schmidt was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir
Walter Scott's
Kenilworth. The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote the ornaments of the airs instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the recitativo secco was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet.
In
Il barbiere di Siviglia, produced in the beginning of the next year in Rome, the libretto, a version of Beaumarchais'
Barbier de Seville by Sterbini, was the same as that already used by
Giovanni Paisiello in his own
Barbiere, an opera which had enjoyed European popularity for more than a quarter of a century. Paisiello's admirers were extremely indignant when the opera was produced, but the opera was so successful that the fame of Paisiello's opera was transferred to his, to which the title of
Il barbiere di Siviglia passed as an inalienable heritage.
Between
1815 and
1823 Rossini produced twenty operas. Of these
Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer
Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time the tragic close was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to
Otello.
Conditions of stage production in
1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of
Cinderella for a
libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera
La Cenerentola was as successful as Barbiere. The absence of a similar precaution in the construction of his
Mosè in Egitto led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the
Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus "Dal tuo stellato Soglio" to divert attention from the dividing waves.
In
1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married singer
Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he directed his
Cenerentola in
Vienna, where
Zelmira was also performed. After this he returned to Bologna; but an invitation from
Prince Metternich to come to
Verona and "assist in the general re-establishment of harmony" was too tempting to be refused, and he arrived at the Congress in time for its opening on
October 20,
1822. Here he made friends with
Chateaubriand and
Dorothea Lieven.
In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre,
London, he came to
England, being much fêted on his way through
Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to King
George IV and the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months. In
1824 he became musical director of the Théatre Italien in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum, and when the agreement came to an end he was rewarded with the offices of chief composer to the king and inspector-general of singing in France, to which was attached the same income. At the age of 32, Rossini was able to go into semi-retirement with essentially financial independence.
The production of his
Guillaume Tell in
1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. The libretto was by
Étienne Jouy and
Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by
Armand Marrast. The music is remarkable for its freedom from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera.Though a very good opera, it is rarely heard uncut today, as the original score runs more than four hours in performance.
In
1829 he returned to
Bologna. His mother had died in
1827, and he was anxious to be with his father. Arrangements for his subsequent return to Paris on a new agreement were upset by the abdication of
Charles X and the July Revolution of 1830. Rossini, who had been considering the subject of
Faust for a new opera, returned, however, to Paris in the November of that year.
Six movements of his
Stabat Mater were written in
1832 and the rest in
1839, the year of his father's death. The success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera; but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to his death in
1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives — the life of swift triumph, and the long life of seclusion, of which biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish culture, his mask of humility and indifference.
His first wife died in
1845, and political disturbances in the Romagna area compelled him to leave Bologna in 1847, the year of his second marriage with
Olympe Pelissier, who had sat for
Vernet for his picture of
Judith and Holofernes. After living for a time in
Florence he settled in
Paris in
1855, where his house was a centre of artistic society. He died at his country house at
Passy on
November 13,
1868 and was buried in
Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. In 1887 his remains were moved to the church of
Santa Croce in
Florence, where they now rest.
He was a foreign associate of the Institute, grand officer of the
Legion of Honour, and the recipient of innumerable orders.
In his compositions Rossini plagiarized even more freely from himself than from other musicians, and few of his operas are without such admixtures frankly introduced in the form of arias or overtures.
A characteristic mannerism in his orchestral scoring earned for him the nickname of "Monsieur
Crescendo."
Opera
La cambiale di matrimonio (
The Bill of Marriage) - 1810
L'equivoco stravagante - 1811
Demetrio e Polibio - 1812
L'inganno felice - 1812
Ciro in Babilonia (or
La caduta di Baldassare) - 1812
La scala di seta (
The Silk Ladder) - 1812
La pietra del paragone - 1812
L'occasione fa il ladro (or
Il cambio della valigia) - 1812
Il Signor Bruschino (or
Il figlio per azzardo) - 1813
Tancredi - 1813
L'italiana in Algeri (
The Italian Girl in Algiers)- 1813
Aureliano in Palmira - 1813
Il turco in Italia (
The Turk in Italy) - 1814
Sigismondo - 1814
Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra (
Elizabeth, Queen of England) - 1815
Torvaldo e Dorliska - 1815
Almaviva (or
L'inutile precauzione or
Il barbiere di Siviglia (
The Barber of Seville)) - 1816
La Gazzetta (or
Il matrimonio per concorso) - 1816
Otello (or
Il moro di Venezia) - 1816
La Cenerentola (
Cinderella, or
La bontà in trionfo) - 1817
La gazza ladra (or
The Thieving Magpie) - 1817
Armida - 1817
Adelaide di Borgogna or
Ottone, re d'Italia - 1817
Mosè in Egitto (
Moses in Egypt) - 1818
Adina or
Il califfo di Bagdad - 1818
Ricciardo e Zoraide - 1818
Ermione - 1819
Eduardo e Cristina - 1819
La donna del lago (
The Lady of the Lake) - 1819
Bianca e Falliero (or
Il consiglio dei tre) - 1819
Maometto secondo - 1820
Matilde Shabran (
Matilde di Shabran, or
Bellezza e Cuor di Ferro) - 1821
Zelmira - 1822
Semiramide - 1823
Il viaggio a Reims (
Journey to Reims) (or
L'albergo del giglio d'oro) - 1825
Le siège de Corinthe - 1826 (a revision of
Maometto secondo)
Moïse et Pharaon (or
Le passage de la Mer Rouge) - 1827 (a revision of
Mosè in Egitto)
Le Comte Ory - 1828
Guillaume Tell (
William Tell) - 1829
Cantatas
Il pianto d'armonia sulla morte di Orfeo - 1808
La morte di Didone - 1811
Dalle quete e pallid'ombre - 1812
Egle ed Irene - 1814
L'aurora - 1815
Le nozze di Teti e di Peleo - 1816
Omaggio umiliato - 1819
Cantata - 1819
La riconoscenza - 1821
Giunone - before 1822
La santa alleanza - 1822
Il vero omaggio - 1822
Omaggio pastorale -1823
Il pianto delle muse i morte di Lord Byron - 1824
Cantata per il battesimo del figlio del banchiere Aguado - 1827
L'armonica cetra del nune - 1830
Giovanna d'Arco - 1832, revision 1852
Cantata in onore del sommo pontefico Pio IX - 1847
Instrumental music
* Sei sonate a quattro (1804)
* Sinfonia "al conventello" (1806)
* Cinque duets pour cor (1806)
* Sinfonia (1808, utilisée dans
l'inganno felice)
* Sinfonia (1809, utilisée dans
la cambiale di matrimonio et
adelaide di borgogna)
* Sinfonia "obbligata a contrabasso" (1807-10)
* Variazzioni di clarinetto (1809)
* Andante e tema con variazioni (1812)
* Andante e tema con variazioni per arpa e violino (1820)
* Passo doppio 1822 (variationen de l'air
di tanti palpiti dans
tancredi)
* Valse (1823)
* Serenata (1823)
* Duetto (1824)
* Rendez-vous de chasse (1828)
* Fantaisie (1829)
* Trois marches militaires (1837)
* Scherzo (1843)
* Tema originale di Rossini variato per violino da Giovacchino Giovacchini (1845)
* Marcia (1852)
* Thème de Rossini suivi de deux variations et coda par Moscheles père (1860)
* La corona d'Italia (1868)
Sacred Music
Quoniam - 1813
Messa di gloria - 1820
Preghiera - 1820
Tantum ergo - 1824
Stabat mater- first version 1832 , second version 1841
Trois choeurs religieux - la foi, l'esperance, la charité, 1844
Tantum ergo - 1847
O salutaris hostia - 1857
Laus deo - 1861
Petite Messe Solennelle - first version 1864, second version 1867
Vocal music
* Se il vuol la molinara (1801)
* Dolce aurette che spirate (1810)
* La mia pace io già perdei (1812)
* Qual voce, quai note (1813)
* Alla voce della gloria (1813)
* Amore mi assisti (1814)
* Il trovatore (1818)
* Il carnevale di Venezia (Rome, 1821)
* Belta crudele (1821)
* La pastorelle (1821)
* Canzonetta spagnuola (1821)
* Infelice ch'io son (1821)
* Addio ai viennesi (1822)
* Dall'oriente l'astro del giorno (1824)
* Ridiamo, cantiamo, che tutto sen va (1824)
* In giorno si bello (London, 1824)
* Tre quartetti da camera (1827)
* Les adieux à Rome (1827)
* Orage et beau temps (1829/30)
* La passeggiata (Madrid, 1831)
* La dichiarazione (1834)
* Les soirées musicales (1830-1835)
* Deux nocturnes: 1. adieu a l'Italie, 2. le départ (1836)
* Nizza (1836)
* L'âme délaissée (1844)
* Francesca da Rimini (1848)
* Mi lagnero tacendo (1858)
Vol I Album italianoVol II Album françaisVol III Morceaux réservésVol IV Quatre hors d'Å"uvres et quatre mendiantsVol V Album pour les enfants adolescentsVol VI Album pour les enfants dégourdisVol VII Album de chaumièreVol VIII Album de châteauVol IX Album pour piano, violon, violoncello, harmonium et corVol X Miscellanée pour pianoVol XI Miscellanée de musique vocaleVol XII Quelques riens pour albumVol XIII Musique anodineList and text of the songs on the website of the German Rossini Society*
Fondazione G. Rossini*
Rossini Opera Festival*
Rossini in Wildbad - Belcanto Opera Festival*
Rossini cylinder recordings, from the
Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at the
University of California, Santa Barbara Library.
*
The Rossini page at Classic Cat - the free classical music directory*
