Why Did Rossini Stop Writing Operas at 37? The Composer of The Barber of Seville

Nobody knows for certain why Gioachino Rossini stopped writing operas. After composing 39 of them, including The Barber of Seville and William Tell, he withdrew from opera at about the age of 37, and the reasons have never been fully explained. Historians point to a mix of factors, including exhaustion, illness, changing musical fashion and the security that his fame had already brought him. What is certain is that he lived almost four more decades, hosted famous musical evenings in Paris and kept composing smaller pieces he jokingly called the "sins of old age".

Born on a leap day

Rossini was born on 29 February 1792 in Pesaro, on Italy's Adriatic coast. Because of his leap-day birthday, he could joke late in life that he had celebrated only a handful of real birthdays. His parents were musicians, and he grew up surrounded by the theatre.

A meteoric career

Rossini rose astonishingly fast. Still in his early twenties, he was writing several operas a year for theatres across Italy. Over his career he produced 39 operas, comic and serious. His music was full of catchy melodies, sparkling rhythms and orchestral passages that grew louder and more excited with each repetition, a technique that audiences found irresistible.

The Barber of Seville: a disaster that became a classic

His most famous comic opera, The Barber of Seville, premiered in Rome in 1816. The first night was a fiasco, with mishaps on stage and a hostile audience, but the opera soon became a great success. Today it is one of the most performed operas in the world.

Its hero is Figaro, the quick-witted barber, and his entrance aria, with its cries of "Figaro! Figaro! Figaro!", is one of the best-known tunes in all of opera. Even people who have never seen the opera have heard it in cartoons and advertisements.

Meeting Beethoven

In 1822 Rossini visited Vienna, where his operas were hugely popular, and met Ludwig van Beethoven. Their conversation was limited by Beethoven's deafness and Rossini's weak German, but Beethoven reportedly encouraged him to write more comic operas like The Barber.

Paris and William Tell

Rossini later settled in Paris, the centre of European opera. His last opera, Guillaume Tell (William Tell), premiered there in 1829. It is a long, serious work, but its overture became world-famous on its own, especially its galloping final section, which many people know as the theme of The Lone Ranger.

The mysterious retirement

After William Tell, Rossini wrote no more operas, though he lived until 1868. Possible reasons include poor health and periods of depression, the political upheavals of the time, a changing taste in opera, and perhaps simply the feeling that he had nothing left to prove. Rossini himself never gave a clear answer.

Sins of old age

He did not stop making music. In Paris he hosted lively Saturday-evening salons attended by leading musicians and writers, and he composed many short piano pieces and songs that he called Péchés de vieillesse, "sins of old age". His last major work was the Petite messe solennelle (1863), a mass first performed in 1864, which he described with typical humour as neither very little nor very solemn.

Rossini was also famous as a lover of good food, and several dishes are named after him. He died in Passy, near Paris, on 13 November 1868.

Learn with Rossini: English phrases

Phrase	Meaning	Example
a flop	a complete failure	The first night was a flop.
to bounce back	to recover after a failure	The opera bounced back and became a hit.
to quit while you're ahead	to stop when you're successful	He quit while he was ahead.
to take it easy	to relax and rest	After years of work, he took it easy.
a crowd-pleaser	something everyone enjoys	The overture is a real crowd-pleaser.

Try this: Think of something that started badly but turned out well, like Rossini's Barber. Write three English sentences using "a flop" and "bounce back".