d
ever known, admired, played, or sung, for he was musically drunk, as if
with champagne. Learned Germans might shake their heads and talk about
shallowness and contrapuntal rubbish, his _crescendo_ and _stretto_
passages, his tameness and uniformity even in melody, his want of
artistic finish; but, as Richard Wagner, his direct antipodes, frankly
confesses in his "Oper und Drama," such objections were dispelled
by Rossini's opera-airs as if they were mere delusions of the fancy.
Essentially different from Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, Haydn, or even
Weber, with whom he has some affinities, he stands a unique figure in
the history of art, an original both as man and musician.

Gioacchino Rossini was the son of a town-trumpeter and an operatic
singer of inferior rank, born in Pesaro, Romagna, February 29, 1792. The
child attended the itinerant couple in their visits to fairs and musical
gatherings, and was in danger, at the age of seven, of becoming
a thorough-paced little vagabond, when maternal alarm trusted his
education to the friendly hands of the music-master Prinetti. At this
tender age even he had been introduced to the world of art, for he sang
the part of a child at the Bologna opera.

"Nothing," said Mme. Georgi-Righetti, "could be imagined more tender,
more touching, than the voice and action of this remarkable child."

The young Rossini, after a year or two, came under the notice of the
celebrated teacher Tesei, of Bologna, who gave him lessons in pianoforte
playing and the voice, and obtained him a good place as boy-soprano
at one of the churches. He now attracted the attention of the Countess
Perticari, who admired his voice, and she sent him to the Lyceum to
learn fugue and counterpoint at the feet of a very strict Gamaliel,
Padre Mallei. The youth was no dull student, and, in spite of his
capricious indolence, which vexed the soul of his tutor, he made such
rapid progress that at the age of sixteen he was chosen to write the
cantata, annually awarded to the most promising student. Success greeted
the juvenile effort, and thus we see Rossini fairly launched as a
composer. Of the early operas which he poured out for five years it is
not needful to speak, except that one of them so pleased the austere
Marshal Massena that he exempted the composer from conscription.
The first opera which made Rossini's name famous through Europe was
"Tancredi," written for the Venetian public. To this opera belongs the
charmin