The premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera buffa The Barber of Seville on 20 February 1816 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome was a verifiable disaster! It probably had very little to do with how the music was performed that evening.

Rossini’s La Cenerentola (Cinderella) premiered at the Teatro Valle in Rome on 25 January 1817. Press reports were generally favorable, but the singers took a beating. Some critics even spoke of a “fiasco” because there was no applause during the

Why go to Padua in the heart of the winter, travelling five hours by train, and looking at a sad barren landscape of the Veneto to listen to an opera?

Péchés de vieillesse, Vol. 8: Album de château: No. 9. Tarantelle pur sang avec Traversée de la procession (version for choir, harmonium, piano and clochette) From ROSSINI, G.: Piano Music, Vol. 8 (2018) Released by Naxos Rossini: Péchés de vieillesse,

It is not clear when Giaochino Rossini and Olympe Pélissier first met, but by 1832 they were undoubtedly in a relationship. He had departed for Paris in 1830 and had left his wife Isabella Colbran unceremoniously behind. She was an

They probably first met in Bologna around 1815, and the union between Giaochino Rossini and Isabella Colbran was to become one of the most successful artistic alliances in the history of music. Rossini was a rising star when he was

“Give me a laundry bill and I will set it to music” When Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) spontaneously decided to retire in 1829, he was universally considered the most popular opera composer in history. No other composer enjoyed his prestige, popular

Rossini’s last opera, the four-act Guillaume Tell, with a composite French libretto based on Schiller’s play Wilhelm Tell, was produced at the Paris Opéra on 3 August 1829. However, within three performances the opera’s length of roughly four hours and