The Life and Music of Gioachino Rossini: An overnight success, foodie, and opera sensation

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Jon Banther: I'm Jon Banther, and this is Classical Breakdown, from WETA Classical in Washington, we are your guide to classical music. In this episode, I'm joined by WETA Classical's, Evan Keeley, and we are diving into the life and music of one of the most famous opera composers, Gioachino Rossini. He was pretty much an overnight success, but he also quit suddenly at the top of his fame too. So we look at his life and his experiences, three characteristics that we find in his music, why he might have retired young and stay with us to the end as we do a taste test of the Rossini cocktail.

The more I look at it, the more I think Rossini was really unlike any composer I think we've talked about so far, Evan. He skipped many of the typical young composer experiences as he started premiering operas basically professionally right away when he was 18 years old, earning a living, and that he's basically on top of the world in his twenties and thirties writing smash hit after smash hit. So it's also not a surprise that we also hear that his personality permeated 19th century Italian culture a bit too.

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Evan Keeley: Certainly a genius of a composer, but also quite gifted in other realms of human endeavor as well. Just an endlessly creative person.

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Jon Banther: So you might not be surprised that also in Italian culture, there have been dishes named after him. I think he even named some of them himself. And we're actually going to try a drink named after Rossini later in the episode. And we're also going to highlight three aspects of Rossini's music that you probably already know but don't have a name to. So let's start. Well, at the beginning, Evan, I love this because Gioachino Rossini was born in Pissarro, Italy on February 29th in 1792. He's a leap year baby, so maybe he's 57 or 58 now.

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Evan Keeley: 58 I think by 2024.

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Jon Banther: And his father was a trumpet player and his mother had some success as an opera singer. But it sounds like he also had an inclination from music early on.

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Evan Keeley: Yeah, he did show a musical talent from an early age as a performer and already starts writing music at an early age. Early in life, he became enrolled at what was then a new school in the city of Bologna, founded in 1804. The Liceo Musicale has since after World War II renamed the Conservatorio Giovanni Battista Martini School still exists today, but he was not the first class, but the second or third class in this school.

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Jon Banther: So we don't actually have too much information about his parents. But there's one thing about his father that I cannot move on without mentioning physically, because his father Giuseppe was imprisoned at least twice in his life. The first time in 1790 for insubordination to local authorities in a dispute about his employment as town trumpeter. That sounds hilarious to me. I mean, maybe it was, and maybe it was serious, but it's 1790. There's a dispute with the town trumpeter. It sounds like a scene out of the TV show, Reno 9- 1- 1. Like Evan, you show up to the city hall for work and that morning at the meeting, someone has to go talk to Giuseppe. Evan, you got to put a stop to this. Go over there.

00:03:17

Evan Keeley: Like the rogue trumpet player or something, and his son Gioachino Rossini. There's this kind of roguish quality throughout his life. He's kind of a rebel. He kind of plays by his own rules to some extent. There's a kind of rascality that Gioachino Rossini has as a composer and as a person, and maybe we don't know much about his parents, but maybe he got some of that from his father.

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Jon Banther: I think that might be the case. And we can actually look now at the very first works that we know of that we have an example of from Rossini. And they come from 1804 when he's about 12 years old, and it's a set of six string sonatas. Now, when I listen to, especially for our purposes, listening to a Composer's First Works or the early examples, I try to be a little bit of a detective and see, well, is there anything here that we see being expanded on and being really a part of their foundation later on? What I think I find here is that Rossini really is able to string us along in the music. There's no text or scenery like in a play, but he's really pulling us along. Things are repeating themselves naturally, but the transitions are quick and sometimes we're just pulled into the next idea before the first one fully settles. And I think we hear that come into play in his operas and some of the more chaotic elements.

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Evan Keeley: Even at the age of 12, he's writing these pieces which show a real command of compositional technique. And there's already, as you said, John, an emerging characteristic style, Rossinian kind of a signature in this music. These six Strings Synod, as he wrote in 1804, are still part of the repertoire today. You can hear them performed on WETA Classical, and they're part of the concert repertoire. They're really quite good pieces. And here we have this child prodigy in a sense, not quite on the level of young Mozart, for example, but you and I, John over the years have talked about composers like George Frederick Handel and so forth, who showed a proclivity early on. And then by the time they reach early adulthood, they're already starting to write really commanding excellent music. And Rossini certainly fits that mold.

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Jon Banther: And a fun odd little, I guess, fact about these sonatas. In 1954, the original score of these was found in the Library of Congress here in Washington. There's been other scores from composers that have ended up there. When a composer dies, things get sold in different collections, and eventually they make their way into a museum discovered by maybe an intern or maybe someone doing research.

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Evan Keeley: A researcher or an intern just digging around in these forgotten archives. And year after year things get discovered. In 1954, so many years after these pieces were written right here in Washington, how did they end up here? That's got to be its own operatic tale. Yes.

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Jon Banther: So his first opera has come really not too much later than this. In 1809, a few years later, he has his first that we call, Demetrio e Polibio. He wrote it over several years when he was a student, but it had a private performance at a patron's home. Rossini wasn't there. It wasn't like his first public performance of an opera. So what was his first fully staged and performed opera?

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Evan Keeley: Well, like you said, John, Demetrio e Polibio a very serious opera. He wasn't there for the performance. I don't think it gets performed anymore at the same age 18. He writes La Cambiale di Matrimonio, the Marriage Contract, which is a one act comic opera, and that was well received in its first performances in Venice in 1810. Kind of sets the stage in a way for Rossini's career. He has this comic opera, which is a success. Of course, he succeeded as a composer of serious opera as well as comic opera. But especially in the comic vein, he reused some of the music even in this early opera as he would throughout his career, as many composers have throughout the ages. The duet, Dunque Io Son from Cambiale di Matrimonio from 1810 found its way into the first act of his best remembered work, I would say, the Barber of Seville.

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Jon Banther: And still with these early operas, he's still a teenager. I still, when I listen, it sounds like, oh yeah, this is Rossini. He's already got that brand or identity, so to speak.

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Evan Keeley: Yeah, there's a distinctive stamp even early on. He finds his voice early on and he sings in that voice for the rest of his life.

00:07:51

Jon Banther: And I wonder if he also had the idea that things are going well and that my success, it's only going to continue, and well, maybe he thought it's really going to come to him. And so I'm wondering if he thought after this first opera success in Venice, one might say, " Okay, I'm going to write something that's really going to knock their socks off something much bigger. It's going to challenge Mozart's Don Giovanni." But after this, he's still writing mostly one act operas. Some of them are two acts, very economical, just a few singers, minimal set, no chorus.

So I'm wondering if he had the idea of being patient writing several small operas in a year that can be premiered, like six of them. I say this because putting on an opera is a huge endeavor, and you learn more from your mistakes, the more that you attempt them, because there's a lot more going on than just the music. So I wonder if he thought, I'm going to have six operas this year and gain a massive amount of experience as opposed to just one or two, or maybe that wasn't even in his hands at all. That was someone else's decision

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Evan Keeley: Maybe. So it's not really clear to me either. And I wonder some of the same things, John. Clearly Rossini from an early age, not only a very gifted composer, but pretty savvy businessman. He really kind of understood. He was able to read the room as it were. He knew how to form relationships with other creative people. He knew how to get his name out there. He really believed in himself, it seems. That's certainly the impression we get. He's just putting himself out there. He's writing a great quantity of music. And as you said, John, he's really relying early on these smaller scale works, which are maybe not as expensive to mount.

There is not as many persons involved. But yeah, mounting an opera, even a small scale opera, unlike say having a string quartet or something, you're really involving a huge number of persons and different endeavor. There's the business aspect, there's the theater aspect, and you have to work with all these different people. And he learns at an early age, at the beginning of his adulthood. He is really understanding this world and really trying to educate himself, I think, as to how to be a successful operator in that realm. And he does this through these shorter works, these smaller scale works in order to hone those skills.

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Jon Banther: I love opera, and I've been very lucky to have been in some opera productions and some premieres. Huge ones that are, I mean, it is hundreds of people that are involved, but I've also done an opera where there's literally two people, me and a singer. That's it. That took also an incredible amount of planning, meeting, talking, playing. It was just, it's two of us and a composer. There's a lot.

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Evan Keeley: Even on the smallest scale, there's a lot going on when you want to create an opera.

00:10:39

Jon Banther: Yes. So Rossini's last one act opera was in 1813, and from 1815 to 1820, he is just pumping out operas very active in Naples. One of the operas from this time period is Maometto secondo. It's one of his longest, most ambitious. It's quite complex. And there is an example in here of what we call, Bel Canto opera, which is something that defies definition, I think. But one of the examples here could be the aria, which I am absolutely going to butcher the name. It's amazing in that I took a year of Italian and, well, I didn't actually go to class-

00:11:19

Evan Keeley: (foreign language)

00:11:19

Evan Keeley: Why know? No more Italian, John. Come on.

00:11:22

Jon Banther: So this one, (inaudible) in Van Sequestro, Cilio?

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Evan Keeley: Close enough.

00:11:27

Jon Banther: Close enough. So this is an example of what we can call a Bel Canto style. And I think we can approach us with the idea of someone who isn't actually really in love with opera. I think the first thing that an average person thinks when they hear opera is, oh, the Viking hat and Wagner that idea, right? The second idea might be if they think about it for another minute, oh yeah, it's an emotional soprano that effortless singing. It's delicate, it's immovable, it's just, it's everything in your heart at the same time.

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Evan Keeley: Right? We used the word soap opera to describe a very dramatic, really an over dramatic genre of television. And the word opera has these connotations of just being over the top with passionate emotion. And like you said, John, we picture the soprano with the coloratura roulades, the runs and all the vocal technical brilliance and how all that expresses such a profound depth of feeling. And you either think it's this weird cartoonish oddity, and we hear Bugs Bunny and so forth, or we think that it's the most sublime expression of human feeling. And maybe in some ways it's both You and I are both opera lovers, and we can take a step back and recognize the ways in which it's a peculiar art form. But at the same time, the more one immerses oneself into the world of opera, the more one can really appreciate its extraordinary power.

And Rossini is really a powerful innovator in the development of opera during the 19th century. And you talk about the Bel Canto style, certainly Rossini, again, it's hard to define what that phrase means, but we hear it with Rossini's music. A composer like Vincenzo Bellini or Gattano Donazzetti are writing this so- called Bel Canto, this emphasis on beautiful melody and extraordinarily beautiful singing and a tune that you can walk out of the opera house whistling and maybe then can be arranged for parlor music and so forth. And people can enjoy it in many different media. And this is all part of the genius of Rossini, is that he's able to really focus on that style of music in such a way that really has an enormous, broad appeal. He's able to sell tickets, he's able to get his name out there and become this famous composer at a young age, but he's also writing music of profound sophistication and depth and cleverness, and he's really creating fine art.

00:13:55

Jon Banther: Yeah, I love the soap opera description that you mentioned that, I don't know, I didn't even think of that. And Rossini is, he's taking these things in that further direction. It's almost like if you have to define it just by the reaction or feeling you get, it's like if you're hearing a soprano singing this delicate legato line, your hands go up to your chest or your heart as you listen. And these are also all of these studies that are involved in Bel Canto singing. They're the foundation of low brass playing trombone and tuba. We have books and books and books of all of these studies by people like Bordini and so forth. So that's an example of Bel Canto. A little bit elusive. We go to another opera of this time, the Barber of Seville, which is I think one of the examples of opera today that we see in culture.

00:14:47

Evan Keeley: Right, right. Largo al factotum, Figaro, Figaro, Figaro. Again, we have this sort of cartoonish, literally cartoonish, but also this kind of caricature of opera ( singing). But of course, that famous aria from act one of the Barber of Seville was a marvelous example of Rossini's genius. And it's interesting to think too about, we live in an age now, and I think this developed through the 19th century, where originality is the divine being that we worship. And that was not always the case in European culture. For most of European history, doing things that other people were doing, but doing them better was really the goal.

So opera in particular, writing an opera that was very similar to other operas that were popular was kind of the default for hundreds of years. In fact, the exact same libretto would be set to music by multiple composers, and no one would say, " Hey, he stole that idea from that other guy." People expected this. And in fact, I think they appreciated it. And Rossini is certainly on the tail end of that phenomenon of culture in European civilization. But the Barber of Seville, based on a famous play from the late 18th century by Beaumarchais, the Figaro trilogy, Mozart's Marriage of Figaro is based on one of those plays. The Barber of Seville is the first play in the trilogy.

And many composers had explored this as an operatic theme, including Giovanni Paziello who had a big hit in the 1780s with a Barber of Seville. And Rossini comes along in 1816 with the same title, a similar libretto, not the same libretto, but a very similar one. And a lot of people so revered Paziello that they were actually jealous of this young upstart Rossini who was daring to tread upon their great master's masterpiece by trying to best him or something. I don't think Rossini was thinking a lot about Paziello when he wrote this opera, but the fans of Paziello showed up for the premiere of Rossini's, Barber of Seville, and they tried to ruin the performance by making a big ruckus there, booing and hissing.

00:16:55

Jon Banther: Oh my gosh.

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Evan Keeley: Of course, this kind of pandemonium in the theater was not quite that unusual in this era. The idea that you're very quiet in the theater is a more modern convention, but even by those standards, this was really out of hand. And they were trying to sink the show, and of course, they failed. The Barber of Seville, Rossini's Barber of Seville is one of the most often performed and most beloved operas ever. And even in its initial run, despite those opening night shenanigans, it was also very successful in Rossini's time.

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Jon Banther: Thank you for describing that premiere, because in my heart, I hope what also happened was they're upset. They're making noise, shouting, hissing and everything, and Rossini comes up, " What's wrong? What's wrong? What's happening?" (inaudible) That version is the best. And Rossini says, " Who?" And everyone starts screaming even more. But the music you mentioned, the Largo al factotum is another example of something we're going to talk about with Rossini in one of his characteristics, the patter song. And it's like, well, what is the opposite of Balcanto? It's like, well, what if we just say as many words as fast as possible all over the place? And it's especially more funny, the lower the voice that sings it.

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Evan Keeley: Yes, yes. This rapid- fire kind of musical recitation. Rossini is absolutely a master of it. He's not the first composer to explore it, but wow, he had just had such an extraordinary knack. It's easy for that to just be sort of absurd and ludicrous and comical and kind of shallow. And Rossini rises above that, and he takes this rather comical convention of operatic presentation and creates something. Again, it's appealing. It's fun. People love it. Audiences find it really appealing, but it's also high art. It's really sophisticated and funny and clever and brilliant. And Largo Alfactotum, of course, one of the most beloved arias. If you're a baritone, you either sing this or Pine to sing.

It's very difficult to sing with all those high Gs. And of course, the patter stuff is very difficult as well. But Rossini is such a master at creating this. And of course, the aria in Question, Figaro is complaining about how busy he is. Everybody wants a piece of me. Figaro do this, Figaro do that. Everywhere I turn, somebody is asking me for something. Oh, why can't they leave me alone? And he also enjoys the attention. So the patter becomes a sort of manic expression of his crazy life. And what a brilliant way to convey that. ( Singing).

00:19:28

Jon Banther: And a good part of my childhood growing up into the late nineties was, well, the Rabbit of Seville, I bet I didn't know who Rossini was for a long time, but I knew the Rabbit of Seville.

00:19:51

Evan Keeley: We knew the Rabbit of Seville.

00:19:54

Jon Banther: So we're going to put video examples of the patter song. It's also good to see, and also Belcanto as well on the show notes page between these five years, he writes 18 operas between 1815 and 1820. I mean, he's just really pumping them out. And then Rossini now turning 30 years old, and 1822, he marries Isabella Colbran, and she was a star soprano and someone that, well, of course, Rossini had worked with. And Evan, what better foundation for a marriage have we known through history than a composer or a theater director and the leading soprano or someone else? That is a foundation for every good marriage?

00:20:35

Evan Keeley: What could go wrong?

00:20:37

Jon Banther: What could go wrong? A lot.

00:20:39

Evan Keeley: A lot could go wrong with these two big egos and these very ambitious people. And Rossini, of course, as I said, I preferred his rascality. And there's a more sinister side to that, the ways in which he was not a responsible person, the ways in which he didn't treat women with the proper respect, the ways he maybe wasn't always honest with other men. He was a complex and flawed human being to be sure. And Isabella Colbran had her own shortcomings as a person as well. And they entered into this marriage. I'm sure they enjoyed much happiness together at times, but as we look into their lives, things did not always go in a rosy and happy ending kind of manner.

00:21:24

Jon Banther: No, but it does kind of last a little bit longer than you might expect for something like this. They also spent Rossini and Colbran time in Vienna, and this is where Rossini gets to hear Beethoven's third, Symphony Eroica. And I did not know this Evan until really looking at this, that Rossini had actually met Beethoven and Beethoven said, " Oh, I love your Barber of Seville." And there were other operas of Rossini's playing at this time in Vienna, but Beethoven also said, " Hey, stick to comedy."

00:21:54

Evan Keeley: Right? Rossini protests in this meeting, apparently. " Well, I wrote that opera about Moses and the Pharaoh very serious. I can write serious music." And Beethoven, we have the sketchbooks or whatever the conversation books. And Rossini talked about this, how moved he was to meet the Great Master who at that point was really quite deaf, much older than Rossini, and born in 1770 Rossini in '92, so they're like 22 years apart. And yeah, Beethoven is encouraging Rossini to stick to comedy, which I think a lot of people think of Rossini as someone who should stick to comedy, which I think is unfair. But despite that, Rossini, as I said, very moved to meet the great German master.

00:22:36

Jon Banther: And he also, along with Colbran, made other trips out of Italy, like to London in 1823. Along the way. They spent some time in Paris, which seemed to be a pretty common stopping point for people, especially composers making their way up north. And he gets there, and King George IV, I guess, really likes Rossini. He's kind of a big hit already. And he's even commissioned to or asked to write an opera for London. That never really works out. And Colbran, I guess also during this trip ends up kind of retiring from music, but they're super popular here for a moment.

00:23:16

Evan Keeley: It's just really fascinating to watch Rossini's progression as he's hitting these European capitals. He goes to Vienna, his music, very popular there. He stops in Paris. Everybody's fussing over him there. He finally ends up in London, the King of England. George IV is, " Oh, Mr. Rossini, how wonderful to meet you. Your music is so great," and he makes a lot of money. He gets these commissions things, as you said, John, the London, of course, a great capital for opera going back a hundred years to the age of Handel. And Rossini wants to have an opera in London, but it doesn't quite work out. He nevertheless manages to make some money. But as you said, Colbran, whose voice is really starting to fail at this point, decides to retire, that puts an additional strain on their marriage, all the traveling around. Rossini himself has some health issues that he's struggling with, and it's an interesting time in his creative life. He's really at the height of his fame, but also facing some uncertainties and some challenges, like I said, this opera that doesn't come to fruition in London being one of them.

00:24:25

Jon Banther: And he's making a ton of money though, while in England for all of these wealthy patrons and people that were paying, I guess, extraordinary fees just to get a lesson or a small performance or some kind of evening playing together in the salon. So it sounds like Rossini and Colbran really milked it for four months and then just bounced and never came back. And first of all, I'm probably reading too much into it, like usual, but I'm imagining two Italians going to England in December. In January. I mean, it's even more funny when you think of that.

00:24:58

Evan Keeley: Well, Colbran was originally from Spain,

00:25:02

Jon Banther: And so that just makes it even worse. Think about the food and the weather. I mean, we can just be real. That was not, it's even funny when I think about it as two Italians from New Jersey showing up in London in 1782 like, My Cousin Vinny. What is this? But they made money and then they bounced and didn't return, but they returned to Paris right after this, and that's where they stayed for a bit. He signed a contract with the king there. That King then died. And so Rossini wrote an opera for the coronation of his successor, and that one was, El Vago. Rhymes. ( Singing).

00:25:47

Evan Keeley: Yeah, this is an interesting time in European history. Paris, of course, a great centre for opera going back to the days of Lully in the 17th century, but by the early 19th century, really a great place to be if you want to be successful as an opera composer. And you see that through the 19th century, including Italian composers like Donizetti and Verdi, and so forth. So Rossini is kind of an early adopter of this Parisian attitude. He's not the first Italian composer to make a success of himself as an opera composer in Paris. But he's part of that tradition and really determines in 1824, I'm going to stay in Paris. He learns the French language. He really makes a lot of friends. He buys property there. He's really settling after all these years of traveling around, he's settling in Paris, and he remains there pretty much for the rest of his life.

00:26:41

Jon Banther: And after reading that he was really in really learning French and really doing that from the ground up. I wonder if he even learned how to say hello in English when he went to England. I don't know how much they tried to learn.

00:26:54

Evan Keeley: Yeah, I don't know how much English he knew. But what we know about Rossini is that he was a very adaptable, he knew how to read the room. He knew how to make friends. He knew how to insinuate himself. So it's hard for me to imagine that he went to London and met King George IV and was just like he probably knew how to behave.

00:27:14

Jon Banther: And we will talk about Rossini's last opera right after this. So now we get to the year 1829. Rossini is 37 years old at the time you think this is, well, his peak, and it's only going to, well maybe continue his notoriety in terms of writing opera, but this is when we get his last ever opera, William Tell.

00:27:40

Evan Keeley: That's right. So his operas have been very popular in Paris for many years. A number of them have been performed there. He has these Italian operas, operas that began with an Italian libretto get adapted with French libretti and performed in Paris. And their great successes. William Tell is exceptional in that it's the only opera Rossini writes with a French libretto from the start. There isn't some other Italian opera that he then adapted. It's a French libretto, this story of William tell based on the Schiller play from the early 18 hundreds. Of course, this legendary Swiss hero of the Medieval period is a very stirring story. Rossini invests really some of his finest music in this opera. He's dealing with a lot of things in his life at this point. As you said, John, he's at the height of his fame. He's at the height of his power. He's 37 years old. He has all kinds of health problems.

He may have had bipolar disorder. We're not really sure. He had these periods of absolutely frantic creativity. He wrote some of his operas in mere weeks over the course of his life's clearly a very exceptional person. He struggled with periods of deep depression and the physical issues that he was dealing with were very painful and difficult. And is this why this is his final opera? It's hard to say. This is one of those things that musicologists and historians have speculated about and spilled a lot of ink thinking about and writing about over the years. It's a really a poignant kind of a thing. And he doesn't give up composing altogether, but he certainly doesn't write any more operas, and he composes less music after this.

But maybe this was like he'd kind of reached the pinnacle, maybe William Tell, it is truly a masterpiece. And maybe he felt like, all right, this is what I'm done. This is what I've had to contribute to this art form. I'm done now. And you see a somewhat similar phenomenon years later with Giuseppe Verdi after he writes Aida, he wants to retire, and he doesn't write another opera for more than a dozen years. And finally, he's coaxed out of retirement by his publisher, and he writes his last two operas, Otello and Falstaff. But Rossini, unlike Verdi, he's done when he's done with opera, he's done. He puts down the pen and doesn't write another one after William Tell in 1829.

00:30:06

Jon Banther: No one could coax him out of retirement to write another opera. He lives for nearly 40 more years. But he does write some more as we'll get into, I wonder if, like you were saying, he's written so many operas, I might as well go out on top. And we see that in all kinds of things in arts and culture where even someone, they make an album and then they're gone for decades before they returned. I also wonder if maybe he saw the beginnings of something new. This is the 19th Century and Paris. It is all about opera. And some consider this to also be part of the beginning. William Tell that is of the French Grand Opera that was coming into fruition these much longer, much more dramatic, more in- depth staging and writing. And I guess I wonder if there was a little hint of, you know what, there's this new thing on the horizon. I've gone up to here. It's time to just-

00:31:02

Evan Keeley: Yeah. It's time for me to pass the torch to a new generation of composers. I think William Tell is definitely an antecedent of what we think of as French Grand Opera. And that tradition, of course, really flowers with (inaudible) . You think of an opera like La Juive or Giuseppe Verdi, a great Italian composer who wrote these French Grand Operas, Sicilian Vespers, for example. But they all owe a debt to Rossini in general. And I think to William Tell in particular, he's kind of laying the groundwork for this French Grand Opera tradition. But as you said, John, maybe he felt like someone else needed to carry that tradition forward, and he didn't want to be the one to do it.

00:31:41

Jon Banther: We can talk about the overtures to his operas for a minute, because this one is one of the most popular Rossini overtures to an opera. Like some of them. This doesn't use any music from the rest of the opera. There were times where composers they would reuse and use lift wholly from one opera to another, just the overture.

00:32:02

Evan Keeley: Sure. Rossini did that a lot. A lot of his overtures. Think of the Barber of Seville Overture is actually, that's the third opera for which that was the overture of his. William Tell, though unprecedented, really a symphonic poem. Like you said, John, none of the music in the overture to William Tell then appears later on in the opera. And it is really, I think the culmination, his overtures are so brilliant. Even when the opera wasn't a success, his overtures often would not go down with the ship and he'd juice them with another opera or whatever. But this one is wholly for this one opera. It is absolutely an overture only for William Tell. It's the musical story of William Tell. It's story told in music. And it is just one of the most thrilling orchestral pieces that Rossini ever wrote.

00:33:02

Jon Banther: And we can also see some of the more serious, or maybe even mob- like style of practices that are going into operas at this time with his opera, La Gazza Ladra. He wrote this very quickly, and like many composers, some things weren't quite finished when it was supposed to premiere. So apparently at La Scala, some stagehands and the conductor, I guess, they locked him in a room up there near the top and says, you have to finish the Overture now. You have to finish it now. He was under guard, and they were taking the music he was writing after he'd completed page, toss it out the window to the copyist below. It's also a good reminder, LA Scala included these opera houses, you can describe them basically as their casinos with a theater attached.

00:33:51

Evan Keeley: Yeah, yeah, it's big business.

00:33:52

Jon Banther: Yeah. Something you see a lot in his overtures and also in his music is the third characteristic we're talking about. That is the Rossini crescendo. The end of act one of Italiana. And Algieri is a great example of this, and we hear it in his overtures. It's basically a moment that we still see today in media, I think mostly, maybe more in the nineties and two thousands. But when you get to that chaotic ending of something, it's maybe in a kitchen. There's a food fight. It's dramatic, it's hilarious. It's a confusing mess. One kid is standing screaming towards the camera, and we literally have a screaming belting soprano in this, and it's just complete confusion. I think that really all comes back to Rossini, who was able to string us along, make it bigger and bigger, and bigger. And by the end of a big section, it is just pandemonium.

00:34:44

Evan Keeley: And yet there's always a method to his madness. He absolutely can convey that sense of chaos and a completely frenetic and wild scene. But he's in complete control. The composer knows exactly what he's doing, and he brings us along on this journey into madness. But he knows exactly where we're going.

00:35:07

Jon Banther: So Rossini stops writing opera at this point, but he doesn't stop writing music altogether. We find the music written after his operas are now for small gatherings these evening, Saturday evening salons at their villa where they're meeting with great artists and other composers and other singers, and they're just getting together and playing these small- scale works. And he wrote a lot of them.

00:35:33

Evan Keeley: He wrote a lot of them, and he doesn't have quite the same frenetic pace of composition. And as you said, John, he's writing these much smaller scale pieces often like piano and one or two voices or small chamber ensembles. So he really does settle. As I was saying earlier, he settles in Paris. He's traveled around his whole life. He's in all over Italy and then all over Europe. He finds a home in Paris. He buys a villa in Passy, which is kind of on the outskirts of the city. It's this very comfortable home. Saturdays, he hosts these soirees, everybody who anybody wants to come and hang out at Rossini's house and all these famous composers and great artists and people of letters and creative people are coming, and he's composing these pieces, these small scale pieces for these gatherings. Other composers are bringing their music as well.

And over the years, he writes these works which get collected into this collection that we know as (foreign language) , the sins of Old Age. He's kind of making fun of himself with this idea that he's this rascally old man whose kind of quasi retired on the outskirts of Paris in this very elegant villa. And he has these famous and interesting people flocking around him. And he writes these charming and very creative pieces for people to enjoy in this more intimate setting. And so he's run away from the bustle of the opera house in the concert hall, and he's kind of sitting there at his own hearth, enjoying the company of fascinating people and writing this fascinating music. And there's a kind of sins of Old Age is maybe one way to think about it, but it's also a sense of he's coming to terms with his life.

00:37:18

Jon Banther: And there are two works from this time period I think we can highlight. One I'll mention is the Petite messe solennelle. I did not know about this until now. This really grabbed me, just the sound of it, because he wrote it in 1863, and it's for Voices, two pianos and harmonium. It sounds like really nothing else I've ever heard when it comes to something like a mass. And I think it definitely shows two things. One, that he never lost it, he had it.

00:37:58

Evan Keeley: Yes.

00:37:58

Jon Banther: And also that he really only meant this for the small gathering. He did not intend it to be orchestrated for a big concert performance. He did orchestrate it later on, but that was because he was afraid someone else would do it after he died. But that's an aside. What is a piece you can recommend from this time, Evan?

00:38:17

Evan Keeley: In the early 1830s, just a few years after William Tell, he starts writing a Stabat Mater. It takes him 10 years to finish it. He completes it in 1841. A really fascinating piece. And you see many different aspects of Rossini's musical style in this one piece. There's certainly an operatic element of, despite the fact that it's church music, you think about the Verdi Requiem years later as a similar kind of a thing. But he's also, there's the very last movement of the Rossini's Stabat Mater is this very lengthy double fugue. Think of Rossini as a composer of fugues. You think of Johann Sebastian Bach or some composer of that era that vein. Rossini shows himself to be quite capable of this very sophisticated counterpoint in this piece that he completes in 1841. And despite this very academic structure that he uses, it also has this very powerful dramatic effect. It's really exciting and powerful and deeply moving music in addition to being technically brilliant.

00:39:29

Jon Banther: And we're going to put videos of those also on the show notes page @ classicalbreakdown. org. And that's a lot of the later half of his life. He's writing some of these smaller things for these gatherings, doing incredible things, as you just said. And then he dies in 1868 at 76 years old. And just think about where opera was when he left it in 1830 and where it is now in 1868. I mean, talk about a breadth of development. And I wonder what Rossini would've done if he kept riding, but maybe he left at a good time.

00:40:06

Evan Keeley: Maybe he left at a good time. And certainly between those two years, 1830 and 1868, as you said, John, incredible development in the art form of opera. But none of that would've been possible, had not Rossini contributed what he did in the years before that.

00:40:23

Jon Banther: So before we get to tasting our Rossini cocktail, we can learn a second about, well, Rossini and food. When he was in Paris, I guess the capital for food, especially at this time, he meets, if I say his name right, Antonin Karem, I think. And they love food. And Rossini develops all these new quite diabolical dishes, to be honest.

00:40:45

Evan Keeley: He really was a foodie. We didn't have that term back then. But he loved good food. He had a real flair for the finer things in life. Antoine Careme of Star Chef in Paris during that time, probably an occasional guest at these Saturday soirees. I'm not sure what their relationship looked like exactly, but they shared a love of food. They certainly corresponded and Rossini himself developed a reputation as a gifted chef, not only someone who enjoyed food, but knew how to prepare food very skillfully as well.

00:41:17

Jon Banther: And it's amazing that Rossini lived as long as he did when he was eating things like tornadoes Rossini. I mean, it's a dish that's filet mignon, fried and butter served with Foie gras on top. That's also fried, right? I mean, health insurance, oh my. They're not going to cover everything.

00:41:34

Evan Keeley: His circulatory system really seemed to endure despite. Whew.

00:41:39

Jon Banther: Wow. So we're going to step out real quick to make our Rossini cocktails, and we'll be right back after this little bit of horn music that Rossini wrote. So we are back now. Rossini cocktails in hand. These were invented actually in 1940 by this famous bartender in Venice. What was her name?

00:42:19

Evan Keeley: Giuseppe Cipriani apparently was the bartender of Harry's Bar in Venice and named this cocktail after Rossini, how it got named after Rossini. I'm not sure. Rossini may have created something similar himself, but it's basically just Prosecco and strawberry puree. Some people add sugar or syrup to it. You and I haven't done that. I tend to avoid this super sweet kinds of things. I'm the guy who drinks unsweetened black coffee every morning. So Prosecco and strawberry puree. It is. What do you think, John? Well, first we got to cheers.

00:42:57

Jon Banther: It's good. Yeah. I mean, it's nice.

00:42:58

Evan Keeley: It's light, it's bubbly. The strawberry adds a little bit of tartness to it. I think adding sugar would make it maybe a little too much on a warm, sunny day on the water, on a boat

00:43:11

Evan Keeley: Like Rossini's music. It has kind of an edge, but it's also caught that bubbly kind of effervescence. And there's that tartness, there's that depth, there's that complexity, the different experiences, the different flavors. And I think that naming this cocktail after the Rossini maybe is a tribute to the many complex facets of his music and his personality.

00:43:34

Jon Banther: I think you're right, Evan. With those descriptions, I've also seen, well, it's bubbly like his music too. Maybe that's just a little bit of, I don't know, copy magic from somebody. But this is great. I think it would be interesting to enjoy this while listening to some Rossini.

00:43:49

Evan Keeley: Why not?

00:43:49

Jon Banther: Exactly. And if you also enjoy this Rossini drink, please let us know. You can send us a picture and your thoughts. Or maybe you have a better recipe too, than just strawberry puree in Prosecco, but it works.

00:44:03

Evan Keeley: Yeah. Be creative. Like Rossini was creative. Why not?

00:44:06

Jon Banther: Well, that's all I have for Rossini. Evan, do you have anything else?

00:44:09

Evan Keeley: I think that we want to continue to enjoy the music of this extraordinarily gifted composer. The more I listen to Rossini, the more I appreciate the depth of his genius and the more fun I have listening to his music. ( Singing).

00:44:37

Jon Banther: Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown, your guide to classical music. For more information on this episode and more on Rossini, visit the show notes page at classicalbreakdown. org. You can send me comments and episode ideas to Classical Breakdown at Weta. org. And if you enjoyed this episode, leave a review in your podcast app. I'm John Banther. Thanks for listening to Classical Breakdown from WETA Classical. ( Singing).