Gioachino Rossini
「If only there were no singers, how splendid opera would be.」
At a glance 🔭💭
People around him ⏳🌊
- FamilyGiuseppe RossiniHe was a father who taught his son the horn and wept at every premiere.
- FamilyAnna GuidariniA mother who became a singer to support the family, passing on her sense of the stage to her son.
- TeacherStanislao MatteiHe taught counterpoint at the Bologna conservatory, but his student learned more from the scores of Haydn and Mozart than from the rules.
- FamilyIsabella ColbranThe prima donna of the Naples theater and his first wife, she sang leading roles in many of his operas and became his muse.
- InfluenceLudwig van BeethovenThe great composer, by then deaf, whom he met in Vienna in 1822; he left a deep impression by urging Rossini to stay with comedy.
- FamilyOlympe PélissierHis second wife, who stayed by his side and nursed him through the hardest years of his illness.
I. The boy from Pesaro · 1792–1806 (age 0–14)
(birth) He was born in February 1792 in Pesaro, a small town on Italy's Adriatic coast. Because he was born on the last day of a leap year, he later liked to joke that his birthday only came around once every four years. (father) His father, Giuseppe Rossini, played trumpet and horn in the town band and also worked as a slaughterhouse inspector. His political sympathies for Napoleon's army led to repeated imprisonments and periods of unemployment, and this instability shook Rossini's childhood. (mother) His mother, Anna Guidarini, was originally a baker's daughter, but after her husband was imprisoned she learned to sing to support the family and took the stage as a soprano. Her voice was not large, but she was a dedicated singer, and her son later recalled that he had already learned the rhythm of the theater from her simple songs. (wandering) The family lived following a traveling opera troupe from one small theater to another across Italy. Rossini grew up backstage, singing in choirs and learning horn from his father and the rudiments of piano from the village blacksmith. (talent) After his voice broke he gave up singing, but showed talent for accompaniment and improvisation, and learned music through practice by filling in on cello and viola in theater orchestras. His ability to sight-read a score and play it immediately was already astonishing people around him at this time.
II. Years of study in Bologna · 1806–1810 (age 14–18)
(the Liceo) In 1806 he entered the Bologna conservatory (Liceo Musicale) to study cello and counterpoint. His teacher, Father Stanislao Mattei, was known for strict instruction in counterpoint, but rather than memorizing rules Rossini taught himself harmony and orchestration by copying out the scores of Haydn and Mozart. (nickname) Around this time his fellow students called him 'the little German' (il Tedeschino), since few students in the birthplace of Italian opera loved the refinement of German instrumental music so much. His admiration for Haydn and Mozart, already discussed in this series, lasted his whole life. (livelihood) Tuition and living expenses were always tight. He earned money working as an accompanist, arranger, and stand-in singer at small theaters, and effectively became the family's breadwinner while his father remained unable to find work. His sense for money was formed during these lean years. (first work) In 1810 a theater in Venice commissioned a short comic opera. At eighteen, Rossini completed La cambiale di matrimonio in just a few days, and the success of this small piece brought commissions from theaters across Italy.
III. A rush of success · 1810–1815 (age 18–23)
(speed) Over the following years Rossini turned out operas almost like a factory. It was common for him to be commissioned for three or four works a year and complete each in a matter of weeks, and it was during this time that he settled into the habit of reusing overtures from earlier works or leaving hurried passages to an assistant. (Tancredi) Tancredi, which premiered in Venice in 1813, made his name known throughout Italy. The heroine's aria 'Di tanti palpiti' spread so widely that even gondoliers and market vendors hummed it, and it later came to be called the 'rice aria,' from the story that he wrote it while waiting for a rice dish to cook during rehearsals. (L'Italiana) L'italiana in Algeri, published the same year, showed his comic wit at its fullest. In its plot, in which an Italian woman taken captive outwits a sultan through cunning, one can see something of his own instinct for survival, honed by a life of constantly adapting to unfamiliar theaters. (filial devotion) Most of the income that came with his success went to his parents. His father is said to have helped print his son's scores and to have wept in the audience at every premiere, and Rossini kept his parents close and supported them for the rest of their lives.
A hit written as his fame spread across Italy, said to have been hummed even by gondoliers.
- The entrance aria's characteristic wavering rhythm (a cavatina) sounds as if it were transcribing the very flutter of a beating heart.
- Its simple, repetitive melodic line caught the ear all the more easily, and the story goes that it was being sung in the streets soon after the premiere.
- The role of Tancredi is a trouser role, sung by a female singer playing a male character, so it is worth listening for the low, powerful color of the contralto voice.
- As the ornamentation increases toward the end, singers often add their own brilliant coloratura flourishes, which makes it rewarding to compare different recordings.
In the story of an Italian woman thrown into a strange land who talks her way out of danger, one senses Rossini's own instinct for survival, honed by a life spent in traveling theaters.
- The passage in which the orchestra repeats the same phrase with mounting volume, following the quiet woodwind melody that opens the overture, is a classic example of the so-called 'Rossini crescendo.'
- The act 1 finale, in which the characters repeat different nonsense syllables until their voices tangle together, is famous as a scene that paints confusion itself in music.
- The staccato playing of the light winds, cutting each note short, drives the buoyant mood of the whole work.
IV. The Barber of Seville, the woman of Naples · 1815–1822 (age 23–30)
(Il barbiere) The Barber of Seville, which premiered in Rome in 1816, was a fiasco on opening night, undone by an actor's mishap and the audience's jeers. Yet Rossini had written the work in just two or three weeks, and even its overture had been taken from an earlier piece. From the very next performance the reception reversed, and it soon became his signature work. (Naples) Rossini's life finally became stable when the impresario Domenico Barbaja invited him to become the resident composer at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples. A regular salary and the status of theater director gave him a security he had never known while being paid piece by piece for each score. (Colbran) It was there that he met the theater's prima donna, Isabella Colbran. A brilliant Spanish soprano, she took leading roles in many of Rossini's operas and effectively became his muse; their relationship grew from romance into marriage in 1822. Gossip of the time held that Colbran's fortune was also bound up in the marriage. The couple had no children. (Beethoven) In the year of his marriage he visited Vienna and paid a call on Beethoven, who by then had lost his hearing completely. In their brief meeting, conducted through an interpreter and written notes, Beethoven is said to have praised The Barber of Seville while urging him to stay with comedy rather than turn to serious opera. Rossini treasured this meeting for the rest of his life, and was deeply shaken by the sight of the great composer living in such shabby rooms.
Turning a disastrous premiere into a triumph within days, this work shows the quick wits that never failed him even under poverty and deadline pressure.
- Figaro's entrance aria 'Largo al factotum' is the archetypal patter aria, requiring the words to be poured out at breakneck speed, and it is a notoriously tongue-twisting challenge for singers.
- The passage crying out "Figaro, Figaro, Figaro" is famous as the climax the audience waits for together.
- The overture, though actually borrowed from an earlier work, fits the drama so perfectly that it is often cited as a prime example of his habit of recycling material.
- In Rosina's 'Una voce poco fa,' brilliant coloratura reveals both her cleverness and her stubbornness.
This finale, in which the cinder-girl transcends class to find love, reads as a mirror of Rossini's own state of mind, having found both stability and love in Naples.
- Sung in the final scene by Angelina, the Cinderella figure, this aria climbs ever higher in range and technical demand, making it one of the rare opera-closing arias written for a rich, low female voice (mezzo-soprano).
- The structure, in which a short melodic phrase repeats and grows ever more elaborately ornamented, transposes the language of the 'Rossini crescendo' into vocal music.
- The ensemble scene that mixes a storm with sneezing is often cited as a passage that paints ridiculous chaos in purely orchestral terms.
V. Paris and the beginning of silence · 1823–1830 (age 31–38)
(Paris) In 1824 he moved to Paris to take up the directorship of the Italian Theatre (Théâtre Italien), and soon after was appointed composer to the French court, receiving a generous lifetime pension. It was a position wholly unlike the precarious, fee-by-fee existence of his Italian years. (Tell) In 1829 he premiered his large-scale work depicting the hero of Swiss independence, William Tell, at the Paris Opéra. No one at the time imagined that this work—nearly four hours long and marking his turn toward the French grand opera style—would be his last opera. (Silence) For the thirty-nine years that remained until his death, he never wrote another opera. He laid down his pen at thirty-seven, still very much in his prime. The general explanation points to several forces converging: the political blow of the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled the French monarchy and cast doubt on his pension payments; the worsening of a chronic urinary ailment; and a sense that his own era had passed amid the new vogue for grand opera epitomized by Meyerbeer. (Health) The lingering effects of gonorrhea contracted in his youth left him with urinary strictures and chronic pain, which became one source of the depression that would plague him for decades to come. At the very height of his glittering success, he was already physically spent.
As the overture to what would be his last opera before thirty-nine years of silence, it was a work whose sheer grandeur seemed to foretell a farewell to an era.
- The introduction, sung softly by five solo cellos, is widely interpreted as a depiction of dawn in the Alps.
- The fierce full-orchestra passage for brass and timpani that follows depicts a storm sweeping over the mountains.
- The pastoral duet exchanged between flute and a woodwind instrument lower and softer than the oboe (the English horn) quotes an old Alpine shepherd's tune (the ranz des vaches), painting the calm that follows the storm.
- The final galloping string theme, launched by a trumpet fanfare, depicts the charge of Swiss soldiers—a melody so deeply etched in the public imagination that it would later be reused countless times in film and television.
VI. Years of illness and depression · 1830–1855 (age 38–63)
(Nervous exhaustion) Through the 1830s and 40s he suffered from severe insomnia and lethargy, symptoms that today might be called neurasthenia. He moved from one spa town to another, and acquaintances later testified that at times his condition grew so dire that they feared he might take his own life. (Stabat) Even so, in 1832 he began composing the Stabat Mater on commission from a Spanish nobleman, completing it in 1841. Depicting the Virgin grieving beneath the cross, the work transplants operatic vocal technique directly into sacred music, which divided opinion at the time—though some also read in it the personal sorrow of his sickly years. (Separation) In 1837 he separated from Colbran. His relationship with his wife, who had lost her voice and developed a gambling habit, had long since grown estranged, and he moved to Bologna to devote himself to treating his illness. Colbran died near Paris in 1845. (Remarriage) The person who stayed by his side was Olympe Pélissier, whom he had known for years. A figure in Parisian society, she nursed him through his hardest period, and after Colbran's death the two were formally married in 1846. This marriage, too, produced no children. (Return) During these years of convalescence, spent moving between Bologna and Florence, his health gradually improved, but he felt no renewed desire to return to the operatic stage.
Completed in the very midst of his darkest years of illness, this sacred work is steeped in the personal grief of that time, voiced in an operatic register.
- The tenor's impassioned high notes in 'Cujus animam' recall an operatic aria, and drew criticism at the time for being too dramatic for sacred music.
- The high register the soprano reaches in 'Inflammatus' is often singled out as the passage where Mary's raw grief pours out in full voice.
- The introduction, opening with the chorus intoning low, is interpreted as depicting the heavy silence of the Virgin standing beneath the cross.
VII. Twilight in Paris · 1855–1868 (age 63–76)
(Return to Paris) In 1855 he returned to Paris with Pélissier, and his health improved markedly. Settled in a mansion in the Passy district, he began hosting a salon every Saturday evening, inviting musicians, writers, and painters, and it soon became a fixture of Parisian society. (Gastronomy) His reputation as a gourmet also took shape around this time. He devised his own recipes and corresponded with chefs, and a steak dish came to bear his name. His quip—'Eating, loving, singing, and digesting—these are the four acts of the comic opera known as life'—captures the ease of these years perfectly. (Sins of old age) Though he wrote no more operas, he never fully set down his pen. He gathered the hundreds of piano pieces and vocal miniatures he had written to play for friends at his salon and titled the collection, with his own wit, Péchés de vieillesse. The playful, self-deprecating titles show that the man who had once shaken all of Europe no longer cared what the world thought of him. (Wagner) In 1860 Richard Wagner, visiting Paris, paid him a call. Both composers, each dogged by a reputation for having gone out of fashion, treated the other with courtesy; Rossini calmly pushed back against the notion that he was behind the times, while showing genuine interest in the music of the younger generation. (Petite Messe) In 1863 he completed his last major work, the Petite Messe solennelle. Scored modestly for two pianos, harmonium, and a small chorus, the score ends with his own inscription: 'Dear God, accept this poor little work. I was not born for sacred music.' (Death) On 13 November 1868, he died at his home in Passy from complications following surgery for colon cancer. He was first buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, but in 1887, at the request of the Italian government, his remains were moved to the Basilica of Santa Croce in Florence, to rest beside Michelangelo and Galileo.
His last major work, completed in the modest salon scoring of old age, carries the mindset of a man in his final years who had freed himself from the world's judgment.
- Originally scored for just two pianos, a small organ-like keyboard instrument (harmonium), and a small chorus, it produces a modest sound that contrasts with the splendor of operatic orchestration.
- In 'Christe eleison,' the passage where the voice parts enter one after another, staggered in time, is built with contrapuntal technique (fugue), showing that in old age Rossini returned to the craft he had learned from his early teachers.
- Much like the brief inscription he left at the end of the score, the piece as a whole is remembered for blending sincerity with self-deprecating humor.
Terminology notes 📚🔎
Cavatina
A relatively short, simple aria sung when a character first appears in an opera, focused more on introducing personality than on displaying vocal fireworks.
Coloratura
A vocal style filled with rapid, florid ornamentation, in which notes rise and fall in quick succession to display the singer's virtuosity.
Rossini crescendo
An orchestral technique in which a short phrase is repeated while instruments and volume are gradually added, used to build excitement and commotion to a dramatic climax.
Ranz des vaches
A simple tune Alpine herders once sang to call their cattle. It is quoted in the pastoral passage of the William Tell Overture.
Fugue
A contrapuntal compositional technique in which a single short subject enters successively across multiple voice parts, staggered in time.
Trouser role
A male character role sung by a female singer. The title role of Tancredi is the best-known example.
Patter aria
A comic aria sung at breakneck speed, pouring out a torrent of words. Figaro's entrance aria is the classic example.