Both his parents were
musicians, his father a horn player, his mother
a singer; he learnt the horn and singing and as
a boy sang in at least one opera in Bologna,
where the family lived. He studied there and
began his operatic career when, at 18, he wrote
a one-act comedy for Venice. Further
commissions followed, from Bologna, Ferrara,
Venice again and Milan, where La pietra del
paragone was a success at La Scala in
1812. This was one of seven operas written in
16 months, all but one of them comic.
This level of activity
continued in the ensuing years. His first
operas to win international acclaim come from
1813, written for different Venetian theatres:
the serious Tancredi and the
farcically comic L'italiana in Algeri,
the one showing a fusion of lyrical expression
and dramatic needs, with its crystalline
melodies, arresting harmonic inflections and
colourful orchestral writing, the other moving
easily between the sentimental, the patriotic
the absurd and the sheer lunatic. Two operas
for Milan were less successful. But in 1815
Rossini went to Naples as musical and artistic
director of the Teatro San Carlo, which led to
a concentration on serious opera. But he was
allowed to compose for other theatres, and from
this time date two of his supreme comedies,
written for Rome, Il barbiere di
Siviglia and La Cenerentola. The
former, with its elegant melodies, its
exhilarating rhythms and its superb ensemble
writing, has claims to be considered the
greatest of all Italian comic operas, eternally
fresh in its wit and its inventiveness. It
dates from 1816; initially it was a failure,
but it quickly became the most loved of his
comic works, admired alike by Beethoven and
Verdi. The next year saw La
Cenerentola, a charmingly sentimental tale
in which the heroine moves from a touching
folksy ditty as the scullery maid to brilliant
coloratura apt to a royal maiden.
Rossini's most important
operas in the period that followed were for
Naples. The third act of his Otello
(1816), with its strong unitary structure,
marks his maturity as a musical dramatist. The
Neapolitan operas, even though much dependant
on solo singing of a highly florid kind (to the
extent that numbers could be, and have been,
interchanged), show an enormous expansion of
musical means, with more and longer ensembles
and the chorus an active participant; the
accompanied recitative is more dramatic and the
orchestra is given greater prominence. Rossini
also abandoned traditional overtures, probably
in order to involve his audiences in the drama
from the outset. In Naples the leading soprano
was Isabella Colbran, mistress of the
impresario, Barbaia. She transferred her
allegiance to Rossini, who in 1822 married her;
they were not long happy together.
Among the masterpieces
from this period are Maometto II
(1820) and, written for Venice at the end of
his time in Naples, Semiramide (1823).
Barbaia gave a Viennese season in 1822; Rossini
and his wife returned to Bologna, then in 1823
left for London and Paris where he took on the
directorship of the Théâtre-Italien,
composing for that theatre and the Opéra.
Some of his Paris works are adaptations (Le
siège de Corinthe and Moïse
et Pharaon); the opéra
comique Le Comte Ory is part-new,
Guillaume Tell wholly. This last,
widely regarded as his chef d'oeuvre,
and very long, is a rich tapestry of his most
inspired music, with elaborate orchestration,
many ensembles, spectacular ballets and
processions in the French tradition, opulent
orchestral writing and showing a new harmonic
boldness.
And then, silence. At 37,
he retired from opera composition. He left
Paris in 1837 to live in Italy, but suffered
prolonged and painful illness there (mainly in
Bologna, where he advised at the Liceo
Musicale, and in Florence). Isabella died in
1845 and the next year he married Olympe
Pélissier, with whom he had lived for 15
years and who tended him through his
ill-health. He composed hardly at all during
this period (the Stabat mater belongs
to his Paris years); but he went back to Paris
in 1855, and his health and humour returned,
with his urge to compose, and he wrote a
quantity of pieces for piano and voices, with
wit and refinement that he called
Péchés de vieillesse ('Sins of
Old Age') including the graceful and economical
Petite messe solennelle (1863). He
died, universally honoured, in 1868.
Biography by: Honey Fox
Submitted On : 08.25.00
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