Gioachino Rossini

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer and conductor of the late Classical and early Romantic eras. He gained most of his fame for his 39 operas, but also composed chamber music, piano works, and 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 a trumpeter father and a singer mother, Rossini began composing by age twelve and studied at a music school in Bologna.

His first opera was performed in Venice in 1810 when he was 18. Between 1810 and 1823, he wrote 34 operas for the Italian stage, a productivity that required a formulaic approach for some components like overtures and involved self-borrowing. This period produced his most popular works, including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia, and La Cenerentola, which peaked the opera buffa tradition he inherited from Mozart, Cimarosa, and Paisiello.

He also composed serious operas such as Tancredi, Otello, and Semiramide, admired for their innovation in melody, harmony, and dramatic form. In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he wrote Il viaggio a Reims for the coronation of Charles X, revised two Italian operas, and in 1829 produced his final opera, Guillaume Tell. His withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life remains unexplained, possibly due to ill health, wealth, and the rise of grand opera by composers like Meyerbeer.

From the early 1830s to 1855, based in Bologna, he wrote little. Returning to Paris in 1855, he became renowned for his Saturday musical salons, attended by figures such as Liszt, Verdi, and Meyerbeer, for which he composed the Péchés de vieillesse. His last major work was the Petite messe solennelle (1863).