‘William Tell’ Rossini called the first performance of his grand opéra Guillaume Tell a ‘quasi-fiasco’. The overture, he said, was fine, the first act had some interesting effects, and the second was a triumph, but the third and fourth were disappointing. However, the theatre director was more concerned with audience reaction at the Théâtre de ...
than 30 years later, when the first performance of Rossini’s opera was about to take place, Paisiello’s Il barbiere was still enjoying great popularity among Italian opera audiences. Rossini was therefore obliged to resort to subterfuge: he changed his title to Almaviva, ossia L’inutile precauzione (‘Almaviva or The Useless Precaution’). The title Il barbiere di Siviglia was not ...
North African setting, Rossini’s L’italiana in Algeri was a resolutely Italian opera. Unlike Aida (1871), in which Verdi took care to evoke the mysterious atmosphere of ancient Egypt, Rossini made no particular attempt to reflect the exotic nature of Algiers. However, given the good-natured harum-scarum fun of this two-act comic opera and the inventiveness of Rossini’s music, ...
the Teatro Valle in Rome on 25 January 1817. This was followed by performances in London (1820), Vienna (1822) and New York (1826). The Teatro Valle, which had commissioned Rossini to write the opera for the carnival in Rome, gave him a deadline of 26 December 1816. However, by 23 December, no subject had yet been decided. ...
Rossini’s thirty-seventh birthday, the best the theatre could do for a celebrity born on 29 February. However, Le Comte Ory was not entirely an original piece of work. Rossini had already used much of the music, including the overture, in his Il viaggo a Reims (‘A Journey to Rheims’, 1825). Composed: 1828 Premiered: 1828, Paris Libretto ...
(Jo-ak-ke’-no Ros-se’-ne) 1792–1868 Italian composer Rossini dominated Italian opera during the first half of the nineteenth century, writing nearly 40 operas in less than 20 years. He established new conventions in the genre, and was the first Italian composer to abandon unaccompanied recitative in an attempt to create a more continuous flow in the music. He also developed rhythm and ...
1792–1868, Italian By the age of 14, Gioachino Rossini could play the violin, cello, harpsichord and horn, and had written a buffo-style cavatina, a short solo song. In 1806, Rossini was studying at the Bologna Conservatory and wrote his first opera, Demetrio e Polibio. The next year he produced his first professional work ...
The cornet is a looped brass instrument with a wide bore and three valves. Beginning life as a development of the circular looped post horn, it became a valved instrument in France in the late 1820s. It apparently reached Britain in the 1830s, where its bright sound soon displaced the keyed bugle from amateur wind bands. Most often to ...
, ousted among other things by its electronic successors, but it was never a bumpkin. Many distinguished composers have taken it very seriously, among them Tchaikovsky, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868), Antonín Dvořák (1841–1904), César Franck (1822–90), Camille Saint-Saëns (1835–1921), Max Reger (1873–1916), and the lesser-known (though famous to organists) Siegfried Karg Elert (1877–1933), who not only wrote a book ...
was not until the nineteenth century that it began to develop a significant role there. At this time, various composers made use of the snare drum, including Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) in La gazza ladra (1816) and Maurice Ravel (1875–1937) in Boléro (1928), where the snare drum plays an ostinato rhythm throughout the work. Carl Nielsen also used it in ...
usually played by two performers (four hands) and repertoire tended to be popular classics of the day by people like Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), Frédéric François Chopin (1810–49) and Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868). Telharmonium Performances Although a small number of performances were given in front of live audiences, Cahill’s vision was to transmit music to listeners down phone lines. He achieved ...
range. In the late 1820s, the first valve trumpets appeared and were soon taken up by composers: by 1830 valve trumpets were present in works by Berlioz, Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) and Giacomo Meyerbeer (1791–1864). Initially, the valve trumpet was pitched in F. The length of this instrument meant that works requiring agility were incredibly demanding technically. Alongside the ...
Tubular bells, also known as orchestral or symphonic chimes, are a set of tuned steel tubes with a chrome finish, hanging vertically in a stand with a pedal damper. The optimum range for a chromatic set of tubular bells is 11⁄2 octaves rising from middle C (c'–f''), as notes above or below this range are difficult to tune ...
valves is attributed to Stölzel and Blühmel of Berlin in the late 1820s, and although older instruments were not abandoned overnight, it was certainly the valve trumpet that Rossini had in mind when he wrote Guillaume Tell. The French horn too became a valve instrument at this time. Schumann wrote for the valve horn in his Konzertstück op. 70 ...
The story of classical music is not bound up simply with the traditions of any one country: it is tied up with the cultural development of Europe as a whole. This section attempts to pick out the composers from each successive age who, looked at from one point of view, exerted the greatest influence on their contemporaries and subsequent ...
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