Gioachino Rossini

Gioachino Rossini, born in Pesaro in 1792, was the most famous and successful opera composer of his age. Prodigiously fluent, he wrote nearly forty operas in under two decades, and comedies such as The Barber of Seville (1816) and La Cenerentola (1817) conquered every stage in Europe with their sparkling wit, irresistible melodies and his trademark orchestral crescendos. His serious operas were no less influential, shaping the Italian bel canto tradition that Bellini, Donizetti and the young Verdi inherited. After settling in Paris he crowned his operatic career with the grand, epic Guillaume Tell (1829) and then, at the age of thirty-seven, stopped writing operas altogether. In the decades of semi-retirement that followed he produced the Stabat Mater, the Petite messe solennelle and a treasury of witty piano and vocal miniatures he called Sins of Old Age, and presided over a celebrated Paris salon. He died in Paris in 1868.