One of the most remarkably successful men of his century was Rossini, son of a village inspector of slaughter-houses, and a baker’s daughter.  Once, while the husband was in jail on account of his political sympathies, the mother became a burlesque singer, and when the father was released, he joined the troupe as a horn-player.  Rossini was left in the care of a pork-butcher, on whom he used to play practical jokes.  He always took life easily, this Rossini.  At the age of sixteen he was already a successful composer, and had begun that dazzling career which mingled superhuman laziness with inhuman zeal.  Among his first acquaintances were the Mombelli family, of whom he said in a letter that the girls were “ferociously virtuous.”

In 1815, he then being twenty-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.