wenty-three, he first met the successful prima
donna Isabella Colbran, who was then thirty years old and had been
singing for fourteen years on the stage. She was still beautiful,
though her voice had begun to show signs of wear. Rossini seems to have
fallen in love with her art and herself, and he wrote ten roles for
her. It was she who persuaded him away from comic to tragic opera. The
political changes of the period soon changed her from public favourite
to a public dislike, and Rossini, disgusted with his countrymen,
married her and left Italy. It was said that he married her for her
money, because she was his elder and was already on the wane in public
favour, and yet owned a villa and $25,000 a year income. However that
may be, it was a brilliant match for the son of the slaughter-house
inspector, and the wedding took place in the palace of a cardinal, the
Archbishop of Bologna. As one poet wrote, in stilted Latin:

"A remarkable man weds a remarkable woman. Who can doubt that their
progeny will be remarkable?"

It might have been, for all we know, had there been any progeny, but
there was not. It is pleasant to note that Rossini's ancient parents
were at the wedding. Then the couple went to Vienna, where Carpani
wrote of Colbran's voice: "The Graces seemed to have watered with
nectar each of her syllables. Her acting is notable and dignified, as
becomes her important and majestic beauty."

In 1824 they were called to London. Here they were on terms of great
intimacy with the king. In this one season the two made $35,000.
Rossini complained that the singer was paid at a far higher rate than
the composer; besides, she sang excruciatingly off the key and had
nothing left but her intellectual charms. From England Rossini went to
equal glory to France. At the early age of forty-three, he took a
solemn vow to write no more music, a vow he kept almost literally. In
1845, his wife, then being sixty years of age, died. Two years later he
married Olympe Pelissier, who had been his mistress in Paris and had
posed for Vernet's "Judith." Rossini was a great voluptuary, and was
prouder of his art in cooking macaroni than of anything else he could
do. But much should be forgiven him in return for his brilliant wit and
the heroism with which he kept his vow, however regrettable the vow.

BELLINI

Of Bellini, that great treasurer for the hand-organists, a story has
been told as his first romance. According to this, when he w