Song ‘William Tell Overture Pt.1′

Song ‘William Tell Overture Pt.2′

Gioachino Antonio Rossini (Pesaro, February 29, 1792 – Passy, November 13, 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music and chamber music. His best known works include Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses, his mother, Anna, was a singer and baker’s daughter. Rossini’s parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father’s band.

Rossini’s father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomed Napoleon’s troops when they arrived in Northern Italy. This became a problem when the Austrians restored the old regime in 1796. Rossini’s father was sent to prison, and his mother took him to Bologna, earning her living as a leading singer at various theatres of the Romagna region, where she was ultimately joined by her husband. During this time, he was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who was unable to effectively control the boy.

He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher, while his father played the horn in the orchestras of the theatres at which his wife sang. The boy had three years’ instruction in the harpsichord from Prinetti of Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only, combined his profession of a musician with the business of selling liquor, and fell asleep while he stood, so he was a fit subject for ridicule by his critical pupil.

The production of his Guillaume Tell in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. The libretto was by Étienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by Armand Marrast. The music is remarkable for its freedom from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera. Though a very good opera, it is rarely heard uncut today, as the original score runs more than four hours in performance.

 

After living for a time in Florence he settled in Paris in 1855, where his house was a centre of artistic society. He died at his country house at Passy on Friday November 13, 1868 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, France. In 1887 his remains were moved to the Basilica of the Holy Cross in Florence, where they now rest.