Gioachino ROSSINI

Born into a modest family, open to revolutionary ideas, Rossini was predestined to become one of the greatest representatives of Italian music in France. Trained in Bologna with Padre Mattei, he composed his first opera in 1810. The many works that followed, written at first in a purely Italian vein, were gradually influenced by the French art, which he had discovered during stays in Naples, in contact with the operas of Gluck, Spontini and Cherubini. At the same time, he developed a taste for French literature, as evidenced by the librettos of Tancredi and Semiramide (1813 and 1823, after Voltaire), Il Barbiere di Siviglia (1816, Beaumarchais), La Cenerentola (1817, Perrault) and Ermione (1819, Racine). It is not surprising therefore that in 1824 he moved to Paris. As director of the Théâtre-Italien, he presented a dozen works there before adapting his earlier successes (Le Siège de Corinthe, 1826; Moïse et Pharaon, 1827) for the stage of the Paris Opéra, thus earning him the offices of Chief Composer to the King (Charles X) and Inspector-General of Singing. Soon after that the premières of Le Comte Ory (1828) and Guillaume Tell (1829) crowned his career. He then withdrew from opera and, while still producing a number of masterpieces (Soirées musicales, 1835; Stabat Mater, 1842; Petite Messe solennelle, 1864), contentedly devoted himself to his famous salon. Despite the criticisms levelled at the “Rossinism” that divided the French music world in the 1830s, the impact of his operas on the development of French Romanticism was of fundamental importance.