Gioacchino Rossini

The Italian composer Giocchino Rossini was born in Pesaro, then part of the Papal States, to a musical family. His father was a horn player (as well as an Inspector of slaughterhouses) and his mother a singer. Due to the chaotic nature of his early years, which coincided with the Napoleonic Wars, the boy was often left in the care of non-relatives his father knew through his slaughterhouse work. It was an unconventional childhood, but music lovers can hardly quarrel with the result. His music unites freedom from convention with a cynical sense of humor, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera. His Elizabeth, Queen of England, or Elisabetta, Regina d’Inghilterra, performed at Naples in 1815, was a great success. He re-used some of the music from that opera in his best remembered work, The Barber of Seville, or Il barbiere di Siviglia, an opera buffa first produced in Rome in the following year. Rossini died of pneumonia in 1868, leaving all his clothes to his waiter.