There was nothing dramatic in Rossini’s life. From an obscure origin he rose in a very few years to be one of the most celebrated men in Europe; but this gave him no trouble. His success was immediate, like that of a beautiful woman, whose beauty every one can appreciate. He never met with an obstacle of any importance, and his brilliant genius was never seriously or persistently denied.
Nevertheless, he made no undue concessions to the public taste, and he was a great innovator. In the course of ten years’ very hard work he completely changed the system of Italian opera. Into opera seria he introduced the most valuable reforms; while for the farce of the old opera buffa he substituted the comedy style in which “Il Barbiere” and “La Cenerentola” are written.
It is a pity no musician has thought it worth while to write the artistic life of Rossini, showing fully and explicitly what modifications, developments, and new combinations in opera are due to him. Without venturing too far into technicalities, I have attempted something of the kind in this volume, which aims, however, at the character of a complete biography.
PART I.
ROSSINI AND HIS EARLY WORKS.
CHAPTER I.
ROSSINI’S YOUTH.
ALTHOUGH Rossini’s artistic life did not number precisely the “three score and ten years” allotted to man, we must go back a full seventy years from the date of his last work to the first incident in his musical career. When, in 1799, Paer’s “Camilla,” written a few years before for Vienna, was brought out at Bologna, Rossini, then little more than an infant, took the part of the child. “Nothing,” says Madame Giorgi-Righetti,[1] the original Rosina in the future composer’s “Barber of Seville,” “could be imagined more tender, more touching than the voice and action of this extraordinary child in the beautiful canon of the third act, ‘Senti in si fiero istante.’ The Bolognese of that time declared that he would some day be one of the greatest musicians known. I need not say whether the prophecy has been verified.”
Gioachino Antonio Rossini, born on the 29th of February, 1792, two months after the death of Mozart, was only seven years of age when he sustained a part in the work of a composer whose fame he was destined before long to eclipse. The child came of musical parentage, for his father held the office of trumpeter to the town of Pesaro, in the Romagna; while his mother, who possessed a very beautiful voice, was able, when the father fell into trouble, to support the family by singing on the stage.
It has been said that Rossini was of obscure origin, but this only applies to his immediate progenitors. In the year 1861, too late to be of much service to him, the “Album di Roma” published Rossini’s pedigree, from which it appears that the great composer is a descendant of Giovanni, head of the family of Russini (or Rossini),[2] who “flourished” about the middle of the sixteenth century. Giovanni had two sons—Giovanno Francesco, direct ancestor of the composer, and Fabrizio, who was Governor of Ravenna, and died at Lugo in 1570. Next in the line comes Bastiano; then Antonio, born 9th of March, 1600; then Antonio, born the 16th February, 1637; then Antonio, born 7th September, 1667; then Giuseppe Antonio, born 1708; then Gioachino Sante, born 1739; and, finally, Giuseppe Antonio, the composer’s father, born in 1764.