The Life of Rossini

farther to shorten recitatives; the chorus has been made more prominent than ever in Itali

had been known in Italy when Rossini began to write, then, instead of saying that Rossini took this idea from Cimarosa and from Paisiello,

rms than the "Marriage of Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," written a quarter of a century earlier. But it must be remembered that Rossini did not perfect his style until about 1816, t

y of Mozart's results. Even in what passes specially for a reform introduced by Rossini, the practice of writing airs, ornaments, and all, precisely as they are to be sung, Rossini had been anticipated by Mozart, by Gluck, by Handel, by a

ans of Vienna, and it may be said with only too much truth that his masterpieces met with no general recognition until after his death. Joseph II. cared only for Italian music, and never gave h

ourt, was hissed by the Viennese public on its first production; while "Don Giovanni" itself, in spite of its success at Prague, was quite eclipsed at Vienna by the "Assur" of Salieri. Cimarosa in the meanwhile was

ed to diminish the reputation of the Italian school. The "Entführung aus dem Serail" was the first blow to the supremacy of Italian Opera; "Der Schauspiel-direktor" was the second; and when, af

oo complex for the Italian taste, while in others too much importance was assigned to the orchestra, too little to the voices. Mozart, moreover, was not in the country to p

h written fully thirty years before Rossini's best works, were not introduced in Italy, France, and England, until about the same time. It took Mozart upwards o