Gioacchino Rossini (or Gioachino - with the civil statue Giovacchino Antonio Rossini ) born with Pesaro the February 29th 1792 and died in Passy the November 13rd 1868, is one of largest the Italian Compositeur S of operas of the 19th century

Its life was in a certain way comparable with the one of its famous crescendi (it composed its first opera at age the fourteen years); then whereas it prepared with a second existence, came impromptu and early abandonment from the musical theater and the peaceful retirement in the Parisian countryside. With still of many pages of music being written.

Born three months after death from Mozart, the “swan of Pesaro” - as it was called - printed with the melodrama a style which was to make date and of which whoever, after him, was to hold account; more than thirty operas in all the kinds, of the joke to the comedy while passing by the tragedy and the opera seriated. The principal contribution of Rossini in the world of the opera:

• a single standardization in the manner of singing as well in the comic repertory as tragic;
• a vocal virtuosity extremely developed and indirectly inspired by the vocal technique baroque;
• the creation of musical blocks developed breaking with the tradition of the arias alternated with the récitatifs. These large scenes called " pezzi chiusi" (closed pieces) generally include/understand an orchestral introduction recited, a slow lyric section, a more dramatic intermediate section (tempo di mezzo) and a cabalette (fast section, more the virtuoso, exaltée). The pezzo chiuso present as of the second decade of the 19th century will survive until in the operas of Made green latest.

Within the framework of its works puff out, Rossini develops a comic vein near to the absurdity (Turco in Italia introduces a poet in lack of inspiration which must create a subject of opera, that one even which is played under the eye of the spectators). In certain large overall scenes, the characters become true puppets and are reduced to the recitation of onomatopoeias which reinforce their mechanical side (Italiana in Algeri). The operas of the Neapolitan period, for submission to the Teatro San Carlo, develop a writing orchestralement more elaborate and a more grandiloquent romantic style (Mosè).

Youth

Gioacchino Rossini is born the February 29th 1792 in Pesaro, in the Marches.

Its family was of modest origin: his/her father, Giuseppe Rossini, known as “Vivazza”, fervent supporter of the French revolution, was originating in Lugo and exerted the functions of tubatore or trumpet of city, which it cumulated with the use of inspector of butchery; his/her mother, Anna Guidarini, born with Urbin, were singer. When Giuseppe Rossini was évincé of its stations, to have too ardently embraced the revolutionary ideas, Anna was committed as singer of theater with Bologna.

Also the Gioacchino young person spent it his years of youth near his grandmother or on a journey to Ravenne, Ferrare and Bologna where his/her father took refuge in his attempt to escape the capture after the restoration from the pontifical government. It is mainly in Bologna that it could be initiated with the music, particularly with the song (he was contralto and cantor in Accademia filarmonica) and with the virginal near Giuseppe Prinetti, its first professor, then of Angelo Tesei.

Rossini has eight years in 1800; at fourteen years (1806), it is registered in Liceo musical of Bologna, studying intensely and with passion works of Haydn and Mozart (it is at that time that it will be called “tedeschino”, small German) and writes its first opera ( Demetrio E Polibio , which will be represented only in 1812).

Meanwhile, it publishes in the 1808 its first musical work, entitled Pianto of armonia per the dead of Orfeo .

It meets Isabella Colbran, lyric singer, older than him, than it will marry years later and from which it will separate in 1830.

Musical fruitfulness

Operas of youth

At twenty years hardly, three of its operas were already represented and, one year later, this number will be established to ten. The official beginning of these representations on scene is towards 1810 at the S.Moisé theater of Venice with cambial the di matrimonio . The long “voyage with the melodrama” begins, punctuated resounding brilliances success and failures.

In 1812, he is several successes with Ciro in Babilonia in Ferrare, La Scala di Seta in Venice and the Pietra del Paragone in Milan. This last opera is looked besides by the critics as the stone of key of the genius rossinien.

The following year, he knows a triumph in Venice with the creation of Tancredi, which marks a turning in its career: Rossini gives up long the récitatifs indeed traditionally used in the serious opera with the profit of a lyric declamation (one of the most known airs of this opera is known under the name of aria of rizzi : a popular legend wants, indeed, which Rossini composed it in an inn during time that one put to cook his rice).

The years 1814 - 1815 are less happy and see especially the failure of It turco in Italia and of Sigismondo, represented with the Fenice of Venice during the carnival of 1815.

It Barbiere di Siviglia

With the autumn 1815, the business manager of the Teatro Argentina, in Rome, proposes in Rossini the booklet Barbier of Seville , comedy French of Beaumarchais that Paisiello had formerly put in music and which many other type-setters had already taken as a starting point.

Composed in 13 days, work is created under the title of Almaviva and receives a particularly negative reception: the innovation of the musical style, the incidents scenic (désaccordées guitars, singer which falls and bleeds of the nose, irruption of a cat on the scene) and especially the presence, in the room, of many enemies of Rossini made that the representation was covered of hootings and whistles.

The following day, however, the public agreed to hear work and this one was considered to be higher than that of Paisiello soon; the applause of the public the triumph of Rossini, renewed at his place with shoulders of men succeeded.

They are only a few months later, at the time of a recovery in Téatro Communale of Bologna, that Rossini will give to its opera its final name of Barbiere di Siviglia .

The opera seriated

A few months later, Rossini breaks with opera-puffs out and turns to the opera seriated while making represent Otello first of all then, in 1817, Cenerentola and Armida.

The revolution of Naples, in July 1820, the constrained one to endorse the uniform of the national guard but its chiefs, not discovering in him qualities of a soldier, return it to his piano.

In 1821, it goes to Vienna to make there represent Zelmira; it meets there Ludwig van Beethoven with which it will not be able to tie cordial relations, taking into account the deafness and of the disease of the German type-setter.

After having wiped a failure in Venice with Semiramide, Rossini leaves Italy for France, where it arrives after a short stay to England where it created Figlia dell' aria which is worth to him the regard of the king Georges IV.

Arrived at Paris, it composes It Viaggio has Rheims, opera of circumstance written at the time of the sacring of Charles X and created with the Italian Theater on June 19th 1825. This opera meets one big hit, although temporary: the majority of the pieces of this opera will be however included in the Count Ory, composed in 1828.

Guillaume Tell

Guillaume Tell , represented in Paris the August 3rd 1829, will be its last opera. Opera in four acts on a booklet of Etienne de Jouy and Hippolyte (a), this opera is a fusion of the specific qualities to the Italian art, with French art but also with German art: grace of the cavatine and the duet Italian, harmonizes deep German choruses, clearness and precision of the French style.

Reprocess

The revolution of 1830 makes him lose the protection of Charles X. It is locked up then in a long retirement which will last until its death, reprocesses punctuated works which it composes for his pleasure and that of its entourage: the Stabat MATER, written in 1841, the Small sins of old age and the Small solemn mass, carried out in 1864.

Its wife Isabella Colbran having died on October 7th 1845, it remarie in 1847 with Olympe Pélissier.

Turned over to Bologna, he sees his retirement disturbed by the revolutionary movements which shook Italy in 1847; made suspect with its compatriots by his horror of popular seditions, Rossini must face popular animosity and leaves Bologna for Florence, where it settles with the palate of San Donato, put at its disposal by prince Demidoff.

The following year, it leaves Italy for Paris, where it settles in an apartment of the street of the Roadway of Antin, spending the summer in its villa of Passy.

In October 1868, it is retained in Passy by a crisis of Catarrhe, chronic disease from which it suffered since long years; he dies in Passy on Friday, November 13, 1868, little before midnight.

Its body was buried in the Parisian cemetery of the Père Lachaise and was transported to Italy only in 1887, nine years after the death of Olympe Pélissier. It rests in the basilica Santa Croce, with Florence.

Rossini left all its goods to its birthplace, Pesaro, in which always in activity an important academy with its name is, formant of new talents.

Others

Between idleness and pleasures of the life

Rossini, man with the thousand facets, is described in its many biographies in a very diverse way: hypochondriac, coleric or prone to deep depressions, or merry, jovial fellow, in love with good expensive and beautiful women; often described like lazy, but with a musical production which finally appears incomparable (although rich person of many centoni , of the former musical fragments are re-used for new works where the type-setter borrows from itself in a kind of car-plagiarism).

In addition to its operas, Rossini is a large amateur of fine gastronomy and rare wines - its cellar with wine was legendary. It had its appointed table with the Tower of Money, at Bofinger and with the gilded Maison, whose chief, Casimir Moisson, to the type-setter a creation would have dedicated, the tournedos Rossini maintaining very known. He is also the author of a Livre of kitchen .

He was also equipped with a great direction of humor, not hesitating with brocarder his contemporaries, who they were interpreters or type-setters.

One can on this subject quote the following anecdote: playing one day, with the piano, a partition of Richard Wagner (which he hated), Rossini drew any only from the cacophonous sounds; one of its pupils, approaching, says to him: Maestro, you hold the partition with back! , it what Rossini answered: I tested by putting it in the other direction: it was worse!

Another anecdote, largely widespread in the musical mediums and become legendary: Rossini had taken the practice to compose in its bed. At the time of the writing of a Prelude for piano , it dropped its partition. Rather to rise to collect it, it decided to start again another of them!

Rossini had cried three times in its life: during the fall of its first opera, during a walk in boat when a truffée turkey fell inopportunely to water, and finally when he heard for the first time Niccolo Paganini.

A rebirth

Beginning of the Années 1970 with today took place a revaluation of many and very famous works of Rossini, a redécouverte which gave place to a true rebirth of the type-setter of Pesaro. Its masterpieces returned now definitively to the repertory of the most important opera houses.

With Pesaro is organized each year the Rossini Opera Festival: impassioned come from the whole world come especially to listen to works of Maestro.

Quotations and opinion

According to Stendhal, he was “a man to be envied”. The Vie of Rossini (written by Stendhal whereas the type-setter was thirty-two years old) became very famous, even if many critics regard it as too much fictionalized: It is so difficult to write the history of an alive man! - Stendhal writing in its foreword - Before it is annoyed (if it is annoyed), I need to say to him that I respect it infinitely, and well differently, for example that such large envied lord. The lord gained a silver first prize with the lottery of nature, gained there to him a name which cannot any more perish, genius and especially of happiness.

According to Balzac, this music gives hope to the most deadened hearts.

Works of Rossini

Operas

See also: List of the operas of Gioacchino Rossini

Cantatas

(between brackets, place and date of the first representation, if available)

• It pianto of armonia sulla dead di orfeo (August 11th, 1808 Bologna, Liceo musical)
• the dead di didone (made up the 1811, created on May 23rd, 1920)
• Dalle searches E pallid' shade (Venice, 1812)
• Egle ED Irene (Milan, 1814)
• will aurora It (Rome, November 1815)
• the nozze di Teti E di Peleo (Naples, April 24th, 1816)
• Omaggio umiliato (Naples, February 20th, 1819)
• Cantata (May 9th, 1819)
• the riconoscenza (Naples, December 27th, 1821)
• Giunone (Naples, before 1822)
• the santa alleanza (November 24th, 1822)
• It vero omaggio (December 3rd, 1822)
• Omaggio pastoral (April 1823)
• It pianto delle MUSE in dead di Lord Byron (June 9th, 1824)
• Cantata per it battesimo LED figlio LED banchiere Aguado (July 16th, 1827)
• the armonica will cetra LED nune (April 2nd, 1830)
• Giovanna of arco (Paris 1832, revision 1852)
• Cantata in onore LED sommo pontefico Pio IX, (Rome, January 1st, 1847)

Choruses and Anthems

• Inno dell' indipendenza (Bologna, April 15th, 1815)

• Of Italy and France (1825)
• Coro per it terzo centenario dellla nascita LED Tasso (March 11th, 1844, re-used in gave it LED lago )
• Grido di esultazione riconoscente Al sommo pontefice Pio IX (Bologna, July 23rd, 1846)
• Coro beyond guardia civica di Bologna June 21st, 1848
• Inno ale pace (Florence, June 26th, 1850)
• Hymne with Napoleon III and his Valiant People (Paris, July 1st, 1867)

Instrumental music

• Sei sonata has quattro (1804)

• Sinfonia " Al conventello" (1806)
• Cinque duets for horn (1806)
• Sinfonia (1808, used in the inganno felice )
• Sinfonia (1809, used in cambial the di matrimonio and Adelaide di borgogna )
• Sinfonia " obbligata has contrabasso" (1807-10)
• Variazzioni di clarinetto (1809)
• Andante E tema idiot variazioni (1812)
• Andante E tema idiot variazioni per ARPA E violino (1820)
• Passo doppio 1822 (variations of the air di tanti palpiti in tancredi )
• Valse (1823)
• Serenata (1823)
• Duetto (1824)
• Go of hunting (1828)
• Fantaisie (1829)
• Three marches military (1837)
• Scherzo (1843)
• Tema original die Rossini variato per violino da Giovacchino Giovacchini (1845)
• Concerto for bassoon and (~1845)
• Marcia (1852) orchestrates
• Thème of Rossini followed by two variations and coded by Moscheles father (1860)
• corona of Italia (1868)

Sacred music

• Quoniam (September 1813)

• Messa di gloria (Naples, March 24th, 1820)
• Preghiera (about 1820)
• Tantum ergo (1824)
• Stabat MATER (1. version 1832,2. version 1841)
• Three religious choruses: faith, the hope, charity (November 20th, 1844)
• Tantum ergo (Bologna, November 28th, 1847)
• O salutaris hostia (November 29th, 1857)
• Laus deo (Paris 1861)
• Small solemn mass (1. version March 14th, 1864, revision 1867)

Vocal music

• it vuol will molinara it (1801)

• Dolce aurette che spirate (1810)
• the mia pace io già perdei (1812)
• Qual voce, quay notes (1813)
• Alla voce beyond gloria (1813)
• Amore semi assisti (1814)
• It trovatore (1818)
• It carnevale di venezia (Rome, 1821)
• Belta crudele (1821)
• pastorelle (1821) the
• Canzonetta spagnuola (1821)
• Infelice ch' io its (1821)
• Addio have viennesi (1822)
• Dall' directs the astro LED giorno (1824)
• Ridiamo, cantiamo, che tutto SEN goes (1824)
• In giorno if bello (London, 1824)
• Tre quartetti da camera (1827)
• good-byes in Rome (1827)
• Orage and good weather (1829/30)
• the passeggiata (Madrid, 1831)
• the dichiarazione (1834)
• musical evenings (1830-1835)
• Two night: 1. good-bye in Italy, 2. the departure (1836)
• Nizza (1836)
• the forsaken heart (1844)
• Francesca da Rimini (1848)
• Semi lagnero tacendo (1858)

Duet of the cats

Famous the Duetto buffo di due gatti is often regarded as one of most famous vocal works of Rossini, which is however not the author. This piece was made by G. Berthold, which used for that the Cavatine of Iago in Otello, as well as a " Katte-Cavatine " had with a Danish type-setter.

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