Rossini how many operas

He was an opera-writing machine. Between and , Rossini wrote 30 operas, the majority of his lifetime output. It is in the top five most performed operas in the current season with performances worldwide. His first wife was singer Isabella Colbran and Rossini wrote many parts for her in his operas, including the title role in Semiramide.

At just 37 Rossini went into semi-retirement following his grand opera William Tell. He stopped composing operas but still wrote shorter musical works such as songs and piano pieces. But it was his many opere serie that proved to be more influential and historically significant. Their innovative style would dominate Italian opera for half a century. In he entered the Conservatorio di Bologna, where he developed a devotion to Mozart that remained with him for the rest of his life and is clearly evident in the operas he wrote.

Eventually, in , he got a break with the sixth of his own operas. The pioneering style of these operas encompasses strong characterisation, extensive multi-character ensembles, and dramatic use of the chorus.

Accessibility links Skip to content Skip to navigation Skip to search Help. Home People Gioachino Rossini. Who was the Barber of Seville? View more news and features. View these photos on Flickr. During this period he produced his most popular works including the comic operas L'italiana in Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia known in English as The Barber of Seville and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico Cimarosa. He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and Semiramide.

All of these attracted admiration for their innovation in melody, harmonic and instrumental colour, and dramatic form. Rossini's withdrawal from opera for the last 40 years of his life has never been fully explained; contributary factors may have been ill-health, the wealth his success had brought him, and the rise of spectacular grand opera under composers such as Giacomo Meyerbeer. From the early s to , when he left Paris and was based in Bologna, Rossini wrote relatively little.

Rossini's last major composition was his Petite messe solennelle