ROSSINI'S LIFE

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXI, Issue 21906, 15 September 1934, Page 10 (Supplement)

ROSSINI'S LIFE

RENUNCIATION AT CLIMAX Half his life was still to run when Roesibi, composer of forty operas, suddenly laid aside his pen and decided to write no more. Feted everywhere, honoured by kings and princes, wealthy—ha chose, on the very peak of fame, to renounce it all and retire into comparative oblivion. "What was the reason of this phenomenal gesture P " I wrote operas when melodies came in search of mo," he said, in reply to ono direct question on the matter, "but, when I realised that the tilhe had come for mo to set out to look for them, I, in my well-known capacity as idler, renounced the journey and ceased to write." Certainly he had plenty to remomber during the thirty-nine years that still remained to him—memories well suited to inspire that "caustic tongue" of his. He could remember those days in London, for instance, when, after a six days' journey from Paris, which had reduced him to a state of collapse, he sang duets with King George IV. George had a flabby bass voice and Rossini's was a light high baritono. Hiß Majesty once apologised for having mado a mistake in the time: "Sire," came the polite reply, "you have every right to do exactly as you please; I will follow you to the grave." Or he could remember that time when King Ferdinand of Spain had offered him, as a mark of especial favour, a half-smoked cigar. Or that famous interview with Beethoven. "I then expressed my profound admiration for his genius and my great regard for having been allowed to voice it in person. He answered with a deep sigh: "0 un infelicel" ("0, unhappy mel") Or, again, that disastrous first night of "The Barber" in Rome when, sitting in the orchestra pit (dressed in a nutbrown suit with gilt buttons presented to him by the impressario so that he look well), he heard his best musio shouted down. The audience roared with laughter when the tenor tuned his guitar for the serenade, they whistled and shouted throughout the whole of the first act, one of the cast fell through a trapdoor, inadvertently left open, and a cat scrambled across the stage during the first finale.

But there were happier memories over which Rossini could ponder if he chose. For all the ups and downs of his career as an operatic composer, h<S remained supreme in that field. At one time ho had had as many as twenty-three operas being performed in various countries. He had practically dictated his own terms for the contracts of some of his works. He had known the adoration of a mother whom he, in turn, had adored. He had heard such giants as Stendhal say of him: "The glory of this man is only limited by the limits of civilisation itself—and he is not yet thirtytwo." And he had knbwn what it was to have all the town Singing snatches of his musio from morning until night. Rossini wrote very little else but opera. He was an Italian, and he lived in the first half of the. nineteenth century, when it was taken for granted that a composer should concentrate upon oj)era. They did not mind in those days what the libretto was like; the music (or perhaps we should say the singing) was the thing. But now we are too sophisticated to listen to meaningless words—however lovely the music to which they are joined. And some of Rossini's music is among the loveliest in the world, as we are beginning to discover.