ROSSINI, GIOACCHINO, ( b. Pesaro, Italy Feb 29 1792; d. Paris, Nov 13 1868 )
In the twenty years from the age of 16 during which Rossini wrote his 36 operas, he revolutionised the genre and provided most of the impetus for grand opera. He modernised the opera orchestra, dictated the ornaments previously left for singers to improvise and insisted that operas were drama.
His father was the trumpeter in Pesaro's town band. His mother was a singer. By the time he was 10, it was clear that music was to be his life.
He had already written 16 operas when he premièred his most famous one, The Barber of Seville, in 1816. Not only was he prolific, he was fast. It took him only two weeks to write the score for The Barber. A year later he premièred his last opera buffa, La Cenerentola, a retelling of the Cinderella story.
He had written opera seria before this time, notably Elizabeth, Queen of England, (1815). But from 1818 on, he was to focus on this form. Of his grand operas, most notable are Semiramide (1823), based on Voltaire's tragedy, and William Tell (1829), after the German poet, Schiller.
Semiramide was his last and probably greatest opera for Italy. After it was produced he went to Paris where he was greeted like a hero. He wrote seven operas in France, all forgettable save William Tell. This was his final work and a monument of the grand opera genre.
At the age of 37 his career as a composer was all but over. A series of charming songs and a failed Stabat Mater was all that was left in his creative gift. He suffered a long illness from which he emerged in the last third of his life to play the r├┤le of music's grand old man in the capital of France.
