Gioacchino Rossini (1792-1868)
Gioacchino Antonio Rossini was born on February 29, 1792 in Pesaro, Italy. His father Giuseppe played trumpet and French horn, first for the military and later in several orchestras. Giuseppe was an ardent supporter of the French and welcomed Napoleon's troops when they arrived in Northern Italy. In 1796, when the Austrians restored the old regime, he was removed from his high positions and sent to prison. During this imprisonment, Rossini's mother, Anna, took Gioacchino to Bologna and earned her living as a singer at various theatres in the Romagna region. Upon his release from prison, Rossini's father joined the family in Bologna, where he played the horn in the bands of the theatres at which Anna sang.
Accompanying his parents to the theatre, Rossini heard a good deal of opera in his formative years and also appeared on stage as a boy soprano before he entered into the Bologna Academy in 1806 at the age of 14. Already a capable horn player in the footsteps of his father, Rossini studied harpsichord, violin, viola, cello, and composition, and within three years of entering the conservatory had composed his first opera. In 1810 a theatre in Venice commissioned him to write the one-act comic opera, La cambiale di matrimonio, after the original composer backed out. Further commissions followed, from Bologna, Ferrara, Venice again and Milan, where La pietra del paragone was a success at the famed La Scala in 1812. This was one of seven operas written in 16 months, all but one of them comic.
Rossini first won international acclaim in 1813, initially with the serious opera Tancredi and then with the farcically comic L'italiana in Algeri. Two operas for Milan were less successful and in 1815 Rossini went to Naples as musical and artistic director of the Teatro San Carlo. His contract there allowed that he could take commissions elsewhere as well, and it was during this time that he went to Rome and composed one of his best-loved masterpieces, Il barbiere di Siviglia. The Barber of Seville was already a successful opera by Giovanni Paisiello and Rossini's premiere of the work on February 20, 1816 was plagued with both stage mishaps and fervid Paisiello followers creating disturbances in the audience. Rossini conducted that performance and was so affected by the negative response that he never conducted The Barber of Seville again. Despite the initial reaction, however, the public was soon won over by Rossini's version of the work, and it is now one of the best-loved and most performed comic operas of all time.
Between 1815 and 1823 Rossini produced twenty operas including Otello in 1816, La Cenerentola in 1817 and La Gazza Ladra in 1817. In 1822 he married Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran, for whom he'd written many of his female roles. In 1823, Rossini composed Semiramide based on Voltaire's tragedy. It would be the last opera Rossini would compose in Italy. The couple moved to Paris in 1823 where Rossini wrote Le Siège de Corinthe and Le Comte Ory. In 1829 Rossini wrote his 39th and final opera, Guillaume Tell, and at the age of 37 retired from the world of opera. Rossini lived almost 40 years more and although he produced some sacred music and a few cantatas, he never composed another opera. In 1845 Isabella died, and Rossini remarried the next year to Olympe Pelissier.
Gioacchino Rossini died of a heart attack on November 13, 1868 in Passy, France at the age of 76. Although he was buried with great honor in Paris, the Italian government pleaded to have his remains returned to his homeland. Today he rests in the church of Santa Croce in Florence, Italy.
