Composer, born in Pesaro, E Italy. He studied in Bologna, and began to write comic operas. Among his early successes were Tancredi (1813) and L'Italiana in Algeri (1813, The Italian Girl in Algiers), and in 1816 he produced his masterpiece, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville). As director of the Italian Theatre in Paris (1823), he adapted several of his works to French taste, and wrote Guillaume Tell (1829, William Tell). In 1836 he retired to Bologna and took charge of the Liceo, which he raised to a high position in the world of music. The revolutionary disturbances in 1847 drove him to Florence, and he returned in 1855 to Paris. Later works include his Stabat Mater (1841) and the Petite messe solennelle (1863). His overtures in particular have continued to be highly popular items in concert programmes.
Gioacchino 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).
Biography
Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a small town on the Adriatic coast of Italy.
Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French, and welcomed Napoleon's troops when they arrived in Northern Italy.
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.
He was taken from Prinetti and apprenticed to a smith.
In 1807 the young Rossini was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre P.
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. Between 1810 and 1813, at Bologna, Rome, Venice and Milan, Rossini produced operas of varying success.
The libretto was an arrangement of Voltaire’s tragedy by A. But any critical feeling on the part of the public was drowned by appreciation of such melodies as "Di tanti palpiti . . .
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.
Some older composers in Naples, notably Zingarelli and Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer;
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.
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.
In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married singer Isabella Colbran.
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.
The production of his Guillaume Tell in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close.
In 1829 he returned to Bologna. 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.
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 Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of Judith and Holofernes.
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."
Works of Rossini
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) - 1829Cantatas
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 - 1847Instrumental 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 (variations 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'espérance, la charité, 1844 Tantum ergo - 1847 O salutaris hostia - 1857 Laus deo - 1861 Petite Messe Solennelle - first version 1864, second version 1867Vocal 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 pastorella (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. le départ (1836) Nizza (1836) L'âme délaissée (1844) Francesca da Rimini (1848) Mi lagnero tacendo (1858)Péchés de vieillesse
Vol I Album italiano Vol II Album français Vol III Morceaux réservés Vol IV Quatre hors d’œuvres et quatre mendiants Vol V Album pour les enfants adolescents Vol VI Album pour les enfants dégourdis Vol VII Album de chaumière Vol VIII Album de château Vol IX Album pour piano, violon, violoncello, harmonium et cor Vol X Miscellanée pour piano Vol XI Miscellanée de musique vocale Vol XII Quelques riens pour album Vol XIII Musique anodineList and text of the songs on the website of the German Rossini Society
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