Rossini, Gioachino - Overtures
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Gioachino Rossini, one of the most successful and popular operatic composers of his time, was born in Pesaro in 1792, five months after his parents' marriage. His father, a brass-player, and later teacher of the horn at the Bologna Accademia, had a modest career, disturbed by the political changes of the period, as the French replaced the Austrians in Northern Italy. Rossini's mother was a singer and as a boy Gioachino made his appearance with his father in the pit orchestra and from time to time as a singer with his mother on stage, going on to work as a keyboard-player in the opera orchestra. Rossini's early studies in music were with his father and mother, and with other teachers through the generosity of rich patrons. In childhood he had already started to show ability as a composer and his experience in the opera-house bore natural fruit in a remarkable and meteoric career that began in 1810 with the production of La cambiale di matrimonio in Venice in 1810. There followed a series of operas, comic and tragic, until the relatively poor reception of Semiramide in Venice in 1823 turned his attention to Paris. Under the Bourbon King Charles X Rossini staged French versions of earlier works and, in 1829, Guillaume Tell. A contract for further operas came to nothing when the King was replaced in the revolution of 1830 by Louis-Philippe, although eventually Rossini was able to have his agreed annuity restored. In 1836 he returned to Italy and in spite of ill health concerned himself with the affairs of the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, but in 1853 took up residence once again in Paris, where he enjoyed until his death in 1868 a reputation as an arbiter of musical taste, a wit and a gourmet. During this last period of his life he wrote the series of pieces that he called the Sins of Old Age, a remarkable display of his gifts, now diverted from the world of opera into a less spectacular form.