Gioachino Rossini

Gioachino Rossini (1792-1868) wrote chamber music and church music, all of it eclipsed by some 39 operas, including his most famous, The Barber of Seville. The Italian was the foremost operatic composer of his day by his early twenties. So great was his reputation that Ludwig van Beethoven told him Barber would be played “as long as Italian opera exists,” adding that to write anything other than opera buffa (comic opera) would “do violence to your nature.”

Rossini’s gift as a tunesmith secured him an audience far beyond the opera stage, with his overtures now standard repertoire for orchestras in both the classical and light music genres. The galloping William Tell Overture entered popular culture as the theme to the long-running radio and TV western series The Lone Ranger. Twentieth-century composers Dmitri Shostakovich and William Walton later borrowed from the same piece for Symphony No. 15 and Façade, respectively. The celebrated novelty piece The Cat Duet – so called because the lyrics consist entirely of meows – for two sopranos, is based primarily on themes from Rossini’s Otello.