Italian composer Rossini: biography, creativity, life story and best works

Italy is an amazing country. Either the nature there is special, or the people in it live an unusual, but the best world works of art are somehow connected with this Mediterranean state. Music is a separate page in the life of Italians. Ask any of them what the name of the great Italian composer Rossini was, and get the right answer right away.

Talented Belcanto Belcher

It seems that the genius of musicality is inherent in every inhabitant of the Apennine peninsula by nature itself. It is no coincidence that all the musical terms used in writing scores come from the Latin language.

It is impossible to imagine an Italian who does not know how to sing beautifully. Beautiful singing, in Latin bel canto, is a truly Italian manner of performing musical compositions. Composer Rossini became famous all over the world for his delightful compositions, created precisely in this manner.

In Europe, the bel canto fashion came at the end of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It can be said that the distinguished Italian composer Rossini was born at the most suitable time and in the most suitable place. Was he a darling of fate? It is doubtful. Most likely, the reason for his success in the divine gift of talent and in the nature of the character. And besides, the process of composing music was for him not at all tedious. Melodies were born in the composer's head with amazing ease - just have time to write down.

Childhood of the composer

The full name of the composer Rossini sounds like Gioacchino Antonio Rossini. He was born on February 29, 1792 in the city of Pesaro. The kid was incredibly charming. "Little Adonis" - that's the name of the Italian composer Rossini in his early childhood. The local artist Mancinelli, who was painting at that time the walls of the church of Saint Ubaldo, asked permission from his parents to represent Gioacchino in one of the frescoes. He sealed it in the form of a child, to whom the angel points the way to heaven.

His parents, although they did not have a special vocational education, were musicians. Mother, Anna Gvidarini-Rossini had a very beautiful soprano and sang in the musical performances of the local theater, and her father, Giuseppe Antonio Rossini, also played trumpet and French horn.

The only child in the family, Gioakkino was surrounded by care and attention not only parents, but also numerous uncles, aunts, grandmothers and grandfathers.

The first musical works

The first attempts to compose music, he undertook, as soon as he got the opportunity to pick up musical instruments. The scores of a fourteen-year-old boy look quite convincing. In them there are clearly traced the tendencies of opera construction of musical plots - frequent rhythmic permutations are emphasized, in which characteristic, song melodies prevail.

The library of the US Congress stores six scores with sonatas for the quartet. They are dated 1806 year.

"The Barber of Seville": the history of the work

Throughout the world, the composer Rossini, is known primarily as the author of the opera buff "The Barber of Seville", but few can say what was the story of her appearance. The original name of the opera is "Almaviva, or Vain Precaution". The fact is that one "The Barber of Seville" by that time already existed. The first opera for a funny play by Beaumarchais was written by the venerable Giovanni Paisiello. His work with great success went on the stages of Italian theaters.

Teatro Argentino made a young maestro an order for a comic opera. All the libretto, proposed by the composer, was rejected. Rossini asked Paisiello to allow him to write his opera on the play of Beaumarchais. He did not mind. The famous "The Barber of Seville" Rossini composed for 13 days.

Two premieres with different results

The premiere took place with a deafening failure. In general, this opera involves many mystical incidents. In particular, the disappearance of the score with overture. It was a potpourri of several cheerful folk songs. Composer Rossini had to quickly come up with a replacement for lost pages. In his papers, notes have been preserved for the opera The Strange Case written seven years ago and the long-forgotten opera. Making minor changes, he included the lively and easy melodies of his own composition in a new opera. The second performance was triumphal. It was the first step on the way to the world fame of the composer, and his singing recitatives still cause delight among the public.

He had no more serious experiences about the productions.

The glory of the composer quickly reached even continental Europe. Preserved information about the name of the composer Rossini his friends. Heinrich Heine considered him "the Sun of Italy" and called the "Divine Maestro".

Austria, England and France in the life of Rossini

After the triumph in the homeland Rossini with Isabella Colbran went to conquer Vienna. Here he was already well known and recognized as an outstanding contemporary composer. He was applauded by Schumann, and Beethoven, completely blind by this time, expressed admiration and advised not to leave the path of the composition of the opera buff.

Paris and London met the composer with no less enthusiasm. In France, Rossini stayed for a long time.

During his lengthy tour, he composed and staged most of his operas in the best Moscow scenes. The maestro was kindly treated by kings and became acquainted with the most influential people in the world of art and politics.

In France, Rossini will return and at the end of life to be treated for stomach ailments. In Paris, the composer will die. This will take place on November 13, 1868.

"Wilhelm Tell" - the last opera of the composer

Rossini did not like spending too much time on work. Often in new operas he used the same, long-thought-out motifs. For each new opera, it rarely took him more than a month. In total, the composer wrote them 39.

He devoted "Wilhelm Tell" to the whole six months. All the parties wrote anew, not using the old scores.

The musical outline of the Austrian invader soldiers by Rossini is deliberately emotionally poor, monotonous and angular. And for the Swiss people, who refused to obey the enslavers, the composer, on the contrary, wrote a diverse, melodic, rhythm-rich party. He used the folk songs of the Alpine and Tyrolean shepherds, adding to them Italian flexibility and poetry.

In August 1829 the premiere of the opera took place. King of France Carl X was delighted and awarded Rossini the Order of the Honorary Legion. The audience reacted to the opera coldly. First, the action stretched for four hours, and secondly, the new musical techniques invented by the composer proved difficult to perceive.

In the following days the theater management reduced the performance. Rossini was outraged and insulted to the core.

Despite the fact that this opera had a tremendous impact on the further development of opera art, as seen in such works of the heroic genre by Gaetano Donizetti, Giuseppe Verdi and Vincenzo Bellini, "Wilhelm Tell" is now rarely on the stage.

Revolution in opera

Rossini made two serious steps to modernize the modern opera. He was the first to record in the score all the vocal parts with the appropriate accents and gains. Previously, singers improvised with their parties, as they wanted.

The next innovation was the accompaniment of recitative music accompaniment. In opera-seria, this provided an opportunity to create end-to-end instrumental inserts.

End of writing activity

Art historians and historians have not yet come to a consensus, which made Rossini leave the career of the composer of musical works. He himself said that he had completely provided himself with a comfortable old age, and he bored the bustle of public life. If he had children, he would certainly continue to write music and put his performances on opera stages.

The last theatrical work of the composer was opera-seria "Wilhelm Tell". He was 37 years old. Later he sometimes conducted orchestras, but no longer returned to writing operas.

Cooking - a favorite pastime of the maestro

The second great passion of the great Rossini was cooking. He suffered a lot because of his predilection for refined dishes. Leaving the public musical life, he did not become an ascetic. His house was always full of guests, feasts were full of exotic dishes that the maestro invented personally. You might think that the composition of the operas gave him the opportunity to earn enough money, so that on the slope of the years with all his heart he would give himself to his favorite hobby.

Two Marriages

Gioacchino Rossini was married twice. His first wife, Isabella Colbran, the owner of the divine dramatic soprano, performed all the solo parts in the operas of the maestro. She was seven years older than her husband. Did her spouse, the composer Rossini, love her? Biography of the singer is silent about this, and as for Rossini himself, it is assumed that this union was more business than love.

His second wife, Olympia Pelissier, became his companion for the rest of his life. They led a peaceful existence and were quite happy together. Rossini no longer wrote music, with the exception of two oratorical works - the Catholic Mass "Mother of the Grieving" (1842) and "The Little Mass" (1863).

Three Italian cities, the most significant for the composer

Residents of the three Italian cities proudly claim that the composer Rossini is their countryman. The first is the birthplace of Gioacchino, the city of Pesaro. The second is Bologna, where he lived the longest and wrote his main works. The third city is Florence. Here, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, the Italian composer D. Rossini was buried. His ashes were brought from Paris, and the wonderful sculptor Giuseppe Cassioli made an elegant tombstone.

Rossini in the literature

Biography of Rossini, Gioacchino Antonio, was described by his contemporaries and friends in several fictional books, as well as in numerous art studies. He was thirty years old when the first biography of the composer, described by Frederic Stendhal, was published. It's called Rossini's Life.

Another composer's friend, literary novelist Alexander Dumas, described it in a short novel "Lunch at Rossini, or Two Students from Bologna." The lively and sociable character of the great Italian is captured in numerous stories and anecdotes preserved by his friends and acquaintances.

Subsequently, separate books were published with these funny and funny stories.

Cinematographers also did not ignore the great Italian. In 1991, Mario Monicelli presented his film about Rossini with Sergio Castellito in the title role.