Rossini: Overtures

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Gioachino Rossini (1792 - 1868)GioachinoRossini, one of the most successful and popular operatic composers of his time, was bornin 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 bythe political changes of the period, as the French replaced the Austrians in NorthernItaly. Rossini's mother was a singer and as a boy Gioachino made his appearance with hisfather 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'searly studies in music were with his father and mother, and with other teachers throughthe generosity of rich patrons. In childhood he had already started to show ability as acomposer and his experience in the opera-house bore natural fruit in a remarkable andmeteoric career that began in 1810 with the production of La cambiale di matrimonio in Venice in 1810. Therefollowed a series of operas, comic and tragic, until the relatively poor reception ofSemiramide in Venice in 1823 turned his attention to Paris. Under the Bourbon King CharlesX Rossini staged French versions of earlier works and, in 1829, Guillaume Tell. A contractfor further operas came to nothing when the King was replaced in the revolution of 1830 byLouis-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 affairsof the Liceo Musicale in Bologna, but in 1853 took up residence once again in Paris, wherehe enjoyed until his death in 1868 a reputation as an arbiter of musical taste, a wit anda gourmet. During this last period of his life he wrote the series of pieces that hecalled the Sins of Old Age, a remarkable display of his gifts, now diverted from the worldof opera into a less spectacular form.Lascala di seta (The Silken Ladder) and Il Signor Bruschino are both one act operas, thefirst staged in Venice in May 1812 and the second in the same city in January 1813. Theladder of the title is used by the hero Dorvil to visit his wife Giulia, forbidden tomarry by her guardian, in whose house she lives. Signor Bruschino, also derived from aFrench farce, centres on old Bruschino, whose son was to have married the heroine Sofia,but has been supplanted by Florville, whom all now believe to be the old man's son.L'italianain Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers)was first staged in Venice in May 1813, the third Rossini opera to be mounted in the citythat year and the first of his full comic operas. A lively overture, with an ominousopening, introduces a plot in which the Italian girl, Isabella, who is sailing the seas insearch of her lover Lindoro, enslaved by the Bey of Algiers, is driven by shipwreck tothat country. The Bey falls in love with her but is outwitted as Isabella and Lindoro sailaway.Almaviva, or L'inutile precauzione, later known as Il barbiere