LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Gioacchino Rossini: La Cenerentola
built 277 days ago
Rossini's taste for wine was ... very wide-ranging. His wine cellar contained everything, from his personally bottled wine from the Canary Islands to bottles of Bordeaux, from the Johannesburg white wine that Metternich would send him to Malaga, to bottles of rare Madeira, from bottles of Marsala to Port from the Royal Household that the King of Portugal, who was a fanatic admirer, sent him. It is said that in 1864 his friend, Rothschild, sent him grapes from his vineyard. Rossini responded with amiable irony, that he thanked him, but that he did not care too much for "wine shaped like pills," quoted Brillat-Savarin. Rothschild took the hint and sent him a barrel of his best Chateau Laffitte. During a well-known improvised toast, Rossini is reported to have born tribute to the Malvasia he would drink with dessert, by calling it "angelic harmony" and "shimmering genius."
Source:
Later in 1816 Rossini produced the opera for which he was perhaps most esteemed by his contemporaries: Otello, an adaptation of the tragic play Othello by William Shakespeare. His next opera, La Cenerentola (Cinderella, 1817), failed at its first performances but later met Rossini’s predictions for success and was performed in London, England, in 1820 and in New York City in 1825. Although forgotten for many years, the opera reestablished itself in the affections of operagoers in the last half of the 20th century. La Gazza Ladra (The Thieving Magpie, 1817), which was extremely successful at the time, is by contrast nearly forgotten today, apart from its overture.
Source:
Opera Australia present's Rossini's opera Cinderella (La Cenerantola). Once upon a time…? It was no more than a throw-away suggestion from Rossini's librettist, but Rossini seized on everyone's favourite rags-to-riches story as the perfect follow-up to The Barber of Seville. He dashed off an enchanting score and two hundred years later it still fizzes off the page. Rossini specialist Brad Cohen will conduct the wistful ballads and sparkling ensembles, not to mention arias which hit all the high notes. This feisty romance is bel canto opera at its most spectacular.
Source:
In 1815, Rossini accepted a contract to work for the theaters in Naples, where he would remain until 1822, composing prolifically in comfort. He composed 19 operas during this tenure, focusing his attention on opera seria and creating one of his most famous serious works, Otello, for the Teatro San Carlos. While he served in this capacity, Rossini met and courted Isabella Colbran, a local soprano whom he would eventually marry. Other cities, too, clamored for Rossini's works, and it was for Roman audiences that he composed the sparkling comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville, 1816) and La cenerentola (Cinderella, 1817).
Source:
Gioachino Rossini was the son of Giuseppe Rossini, an impoverished trumpeter who played in miscellaneous bands and orchestras, and Anna Guidarini, a singer of secondary roles. Thus Rossini spent his entire childhood in the theatre. Though a lazy student, the young Rossini found it easy to learn to sing and play.
Source:
Riccardo Muti conducts the orchestra and chorus of Milan's famed La Scala Theatre in this elaborate 2003 production of Gioacchino Rossini's "Moise et Pharaon," a staging of the biblical conflict between Moses (Ildar Abdrazakov) and an Egyptian pharaoh (Erwin Schrott). The gifted ensemble cast includes Giuseppe Filianoti, Tomislav Muzek, Giogio Giuseppini, Antonello Ceron, Sonia Ganassi, Barbara Frittoli and Nino Surguladze.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
La Cenerentola