After the premiere of his Guglielmo Tell (William Tell) at the Paris Opéra in 1829, Gioacchino Rossini retired. He was only 37 years old, but he had already produced 39 operas - the first of them, La cambiale di matrimonio (The Bill of Marriage) when he was 18. He had enjoyed stunning successes all over Europe and was the most popular composer of his day, but he had worn himself out; or perhaps, after having transformed the simple operatic forms of Paisiello and Cimarosa, the popular composers of his youth, into much more elaborate and satisfying creations, he realized that further developments had to be left to his successors. Born to musician parents in the city of Pesaro, on Italy's Adriatic coast, Rossini was so talented that he was accepted into Bologna's prestigious Accademia Filarmonica at the age of 14. By his late teens, he was working in the rough-and-tumble world of opera - quickly composing works on commission for specific theatres and tailored to the vocal requirements of certain singers. His first major success, La pietra del paragone (The Touchstone) given at La Scala in 1812, came when he was only 20. He did not achieve triumphs with all of his subsequent works, but he moved steadily upward in the public's esteem. Today, his best-known works are the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers; 1813), Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, which failed at its premiere in 1816, but soon became his most popular work and remains the best-loved of all comic operas) and La Cenerentola (Cinderella; 1817). In Rossini's day, however, at least a dozen of his other operas, comic and serious, were frequently performed. Following his retirement, he lived in Bologna, Florence and Paris. In 1822 he married the celebrated Spanish soprano Isabella Colbran, with whom he had been living for some time; early in the 1830s, he began an affair with a Frenchwoman, Olympe Pélissier, whom he married after Colbran's death in 1845. He was also a famous host and gourmet, his interest in good food and drink going back to his childhood, when at the age of six he reportedly was draining off ampoules of communion wine in Pesaro's churches. After the premiere of Guglielmo Tell in Paris in 1829, an apple torte was created in his honour, decorated with an arrow and crossbow and crowned by a sugar apple pierced by a sugar arrow. A French nobleman described one of Rossini's famous dinners at Passy, where the composer lived from 1856 until his death: "Rossini stood there without moving, as if in a spell, watching over his favourite dish, and listening to the delicate murmur of his beloved pasta [cooking] as if his ear were tuned to the harmonious notes of the Divine Comedy." Although his last four decades were plagued by frequent bouts of ill health and depresssion, from time to time Rossini did return to composition, producing several religious works and charming short vocal and piano pieces, which he sometimes referred to as the "sins of my old age". Since the 1960s, a Rossini revival has led to the rediscovery of most of his works, and at the end of the 20th century his reputation has returned to the high level from which it fell a century and a half ago.

Harvey Sachs

Biographical notes (c) 1996, reprinted by permission of Deutsche Grammophon GmbH, Hamburg

A selection of major works:

Orchestral: Introduction, Theme and Variations, Rendez-vous de chasse,

Variations in C. Chamber: 6 Sonate a quattro. Instrumental solo: Péchés de vieillesse. Vocal: Péchés de vieillesse, Salve Regina, Soirées musicales.

Choral: Missa di Ravenna, Missa di Rimini, Messa di Gloria, Messa di Milano, Petite messe solennele, Stabat Mater.

Stage works (operas): Armida, Il barbiere di Siviglia, La Cenerentola, Le comte Ory, La donna del lago, Elisabetta, La gazza ladra, Guglielmo Tell, L'italiana in Algeri, Maometto secondo, Mosè, Mosè in Egitto, La pietra del paragone, La scala di seta, Semiradime, Tancredi, Il turco in Italia, Il viaggio a Rheims.