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Brochure Works of Gioachino Rossini
(Italian/English/German)
»No composer in the first half of the 19th century enjoyed the measure of prestige, wealth, popular acclaim or artistic influence that belonged to Gioachino Rossini. His contemporaries recognized him as the greatest Italian composer of his time. His achievements cast into oblivion the operatic world of Cimarosa and Paisiello, creating new standards against which other composers were to be judged. That both Bellini and Donizetti carved out personal styles is undeniable; but they worked under Rossini’s shadow, and their artistic personalities emerged in confrontation with his operas. Not until the advent of Verdi was Rossini replaced at the center of Italian operatic life.«Philip Gossett, The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
Through 1829 Rossini was an extraordinarily prolific composer of operas, comic, serious, and semi-serious, in Italian and French, as well as of a great deal of vocal and instrumental music. He composed sacred music, vocal treatises, cantatas. Then, for many different reasons, he wrote very little music for more than twenty-five years, except some songs and the Stabat Mater. Only after he left Italy definitively for Paris in 1855 did he find his voice again. Between 1857 and 1868 a fresh group of masterpieces issued from his pen, the so-called Péchés de vieillesse (Sins of Old Age), including chamber music, songs, and the Petite Messe Solennelle.
