Gioachino Rossini
The Romantic Period
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Rossini was born in a small Italian town in the Papal States. His father was a trumpet player with a reckless streak, often in trouble with the authorities (once for supporting Napoleon) and seldom providing a steady income for the family. His mother was a singer and the family's source of stability.
Rossini studied music with his parents and was educated at a good school in Bologna. He composed his first opera in 1810 at the age of 18, and quickly became a star composer. He received a commission from La Scala, the famous operahouse of Milan, just two years later, and had works performed at Venice's La Fenice the following year. In 1815 he moved to Naples, where he was highly successful. The followin gyear, he composed "The Barber of Seville" for a performance in Rome. By 1825, Rossini's operas were being performed all over the world.
In 1822, Rossini married Isabella Colbran, a soprano seven years his senior (and the former girlfriend of his boss in Naples), and moved to Vienna. He met Ludwig van Beethoven that year, but as Beethoven was deaf and Rossini didn't speak German, there was not an extensive conversation. The following year, Rossini visited Paris and took a highly profitable concert tour of England, where he met King George IV, before returning to France on a lifetime annuity contract from King Louis XVIII, which eventually resulted in the French opera "Guillaume Tell."
Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Rossini left Paris in 1830 just before the July Revolution. The new king, Louis Philippe, rescinded Rossini's contract as part of deep cuts to government spending. Rossini went back to Paris, abandoning his wife in Italy, renegotiated a contract with the French government, and began an affair with a courtesan named Olympe Pélissier. He saw his wife one more time before she died in 1845, and Rossini married Pélissier in Bologna the following year. To escape the Revolutions of 1848, Rossini moved to Florence, and then returned to Paris in 1855.
Having achieved worldwide fame and a considerable fortune, Rossini never wrote another opera. He hung out in Paris, ate a lot of food (as you can see), and would often host other musicians, including Franz Liszt and Giuseppe Verdi, at weekly "salons" at his home. He would also comment on other composers. He was particularly critical of Richard Wagner, whom he did meet cordially at one point, but whose music he described as having "lovely moments and awful quarters of an hour." When asked what he thought of Wagner's opera "Lohengrin," he said, "It is impossible to judge a Wagner opera from one hearing only, and I have no intention of hearing one a second time."
Rossini wrote a few more compositions after returning to Paris, including a solemn mass titled "Petite Messe Solennelle," but nothing on the scale of his earlier operatic works. He died in Paris at the age of 76.