Giaccomo rossini biography

Italian opera composer (1792–1868)

"Rossini" redirects here. For other uses, see Rossini (disambiguation).

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces and some sacred music. He set new standards for both comic and serious opera before retiring from large-scale composition while still in his thirties, at the height of his popularity.

Born in Pesaro to parents who were both musicians (his father a trumpeter, his mother a singer), Rossini began to compose by the age of twelve and was educated at music school in Bologna. His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18 years old. In 1815 he was engaged to write operas and manage theatres in Naples. In the period 1810–1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage that were performed in Venice, Milan, Ferrara, Naples and elsewhere; this productivity necessitated an almost formulaic approach for some components (such as overtures) and a certain amount of self-borrowing. During this period he produced his most popular works, including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa and Giovanni Paisiello. He also composed opera seria works such as Tancredi, Otello and Semiramide. All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il viaggio a Reims (later cannibalised for his first opera in French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas, Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera,

Operagoers were intoxicated by his frothy comic masterpieces – but at the moment of Rossini's greatest success, the Italian composer stopped writing them.

Rossini was one of classical music’s great bon viveurs. A larger-than-life character with an appetite to match, he earned the admiration and friendship of musicians of the calibre of Liszt, Chopin and Paganini.

Even Wagner, who had hardly a kind word to say for anyone but himself, was completely bowled over by what he described as Rossini’s “narcotising melodic invention”.

For his part, and despite conceding Wagner’s importance as the “voice of the future”, Rossini notoriously quipped that the German’s operas had “beautiful moments, but awful quarter-hours”.

Not everyone was equally intoxicated by the Italian’s scintillating operatic cocktails.

Cesar Cui, spokesman for the group of Russian composers known as “The Five”, felt that after The Barber Of Seville, “the rest of Rossini’s output was merely a feeble and pallid copy”.

Beethoven put it a little more tactfully when he opined that “Rossini would have been a great composer if his teacher had spanked him enough”.

In more recent times, writer and broadcaster Clive James was perhaps not too far off the mark when he succinctly described Rossini as “Mozart without the brains”. Yet, by and large, few would dissent from Mendelssohn’s excited assessment of him as “a genius”.

Rossini was also an expert chef who, judging from his well-rounded physique, enjoyed consuming healthy portions of his culinary masterpieces as much as he did preparing them. Yet whatever his lack of physical agility, his music possesses a refinement, textural transparency and sleight-of-hand flair all of its own.

He was widely renowned as one of the quickest wits in European artistic circles, and the speed at which he

BIOGRAPHY

Rossini, a robust Italian man with an outgoing personality, was born in a small town, Pesaro, on the east coast of Italy on February 29, 1792 (leap day). His father was a musician and his mother was an opera singer. As a boy, he was a singer and played the cello and horn. At 15, he entered a music school in Bologna, Italy where he learned to compose music. Rossini once said to give him a laundry list and he would set it to music! His first successful composition was completed at age 18 in Venice, Italy, and his masterpiece, The Barber of Seville, was first performed in Rome, Italy when he was only 24 years of age.

He composed thirty operas, the last of which was William Tell, with its famous overture, storm scene, and ballet music. Rossini was a lazy man, fond of women, and a very good cook. He liked to host dinner parties for his friends, among whom was Franz Liszt, another famous composer. He had fun teasing and playing tricks on his friends. (Those characteristics are also found in his music.) Rossini was married two times and both wives were opera singers. When criticized about his life-style, he responded that one should not expect much more of a man born on leap day!

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 Guglielmo Tell(William Tell (opera))—the end of the overture is popularly known for being the theme song for The Lone Ranger.

Biography

Early years

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 I of France'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 her son 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 with his aging grandmother, who was unable to control the boy.

He remained in 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 musical profession with the liquor business, and fell asleep while he stood, so that his critical pupil