Gioacchino Rossini was obsessively superstitious and even suicidal

Posted in Dance, Famous Composers, Historical articles, History, Music, Theatre on Monday, 23 September 2013

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This edited article about music originally appeared in Look and Learn issue number 407 published on 1 November 1969.

Rossini at home, picture, image, illustration

Rossini and his wife, Olympe, at one of their famous soirees musicales by Andrew Howat

For many months Gioacchino Rossini – composer of such world-famous operas as The Barber of Seville and William Tell – had been seeking the courage to kill himself. The victim of a severe nervous disorder, he had lost his sense of taste, could no longer swallow food, and had gone as long as 14 weeks without sleep. Each day, as he stood in front of a mirror, the Italian cursed himself for being too much of a coward to commit suicide. “To what am I come,” he asked pitifully, “and what am I doing in this world? And what will people say when they see me reduced, like a baby, to having to rely on a woman’s care?”

The woman in question was his second wife, Olympe, who looked after him with the tenderness of a mother. During the period of Rossini’s long illness he wrote no music at all. But in 1857, while living in Paris, he composed some songs and piano pieces which he modestly described as mere trifles. Nevertheless, he thought enough of the music to allow his guests to play and sing it at his regular Saturday evening parties. Everyone congratulated the composer on his recovery.

“I offer these little songs to my dear wife, Olympe,” he said in a dedication, “as a tribute of gratitude for the affectionate and intelligent care that she lavished upon me in my excessively long and terrible illness.” The songs were not published in Rossini’s lifetime. But more than 40 years after his death another Italian, Ottorino Respighi, arranged the pieces to form the one-act ballet La Boutique Fantasque, or The Fantastic Toyshop.

The ballet was successfully performed in London in 1919, so resuming Rossini’s association with a city that had always taken his music to its heart. In December, 1823, he came to London and left six months later after earning the then enormous sum of £7,000 by singing.

As a boy, Rossini was noted for his beautiful singing voice. His father was the municipal trumpeter to the Italian town of Pesaro, and the youngster soon became a competent ‘cello player. After training at the Conservatory of Bologna, he started his career as a composer and between 1810-29 wrote no less than 36 operas. He was renowned for his melodic sense of humour and also for being extremely superstitious.

He had a dread of signs and omens and allowed his life to be governed by them. This lasted until November, 1868, when he died after a series of illnesses on Friday the 13th.

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