“Nothing,” said Mme. Georgi-Righetti, “could be imagined more tender, more touching, than the voice and action of this remarkable child.”

The young Rossini, after a year or two, came under the notice of the celebrated teacher Tesei, of Bologna, who gave him lessons in pianoforte playing and the voice, and obtained him a good place as boy-soprano at one of the churches.  He now attracted the attention of the Countess Perticari, who admired his voice, and she sent him to the Lyceum to learn fugue and counterpoint at the feet of a very strict Gamaliel, Padre Mallei.  The youth was no dull student, and, in spite of his capricious indolence, which vexed the soul of his tutor, he made such rapid progress that at the age of sixteen he was chosen to write the cantata, annually awarded to the most promising student.  Success greeted the juvenile effort, and thus we see Rossini fairly launched as a composer.  Of the early operas which he poured out for five years it is not needful to speak, except that one of them so pleased the austere Marshal Massena that he exempted the composer from conscription.  The first opera which made Rossini’s name famous through Europe was “Tancredi,” written for the Venetian public.  To this opera belongs the charming “Di tanti palpiti,” written under the following circumstances:  Mme. Melanotte, the prima donna, took the whim during the final rehearsal that she would not sing the opening air, but must have another.  Rossini went home in sore disgust, for the whole opera was likely to be put off by this caprice.  There were but two hours before the performance, he sat waiting for his macaroni, when an exquisite air came into his head, and it was written in five minutes.

After his great success he received offers from almost every town in Italy, each clamoring to be served first.  Every manager was required to furnish his theatre with an opera from the pen of the new idol.  For these earlier essays he received a thousand francs each, and he wrote five or six a year.  Stendhall, Rossini’s spirited biographer, gives a picturesque account of life in the Italian theatres at this time, a status which remains in some of its features to-day: 

“The mechanism is as follows:  The manager is frequently one of the most wealthy and considerable persons of the little town he inhabits.  He forms a company consisting of prima donna, tenoro, basso cantante, basso buffo, a second female singer, and a third basso.  The libretto, or poem, purchased for sixty or eighty francs from some lucky son of the muses, who is generally a half-starved abbe, the hanger-on of some rich family in the neighborhood.  The character of the parasite, so admirably painted by Terence, is still to be found in all its glory in Lombardy, where the smallest town can boast of some five or six families of some wealth.

“A maestro, or composer, is then engaged to write a new opera, and he is obliged to adapt his own airs to the voices and capacity of the company.  The manager intrusts the care of the financial department to a registrario, who is generally some pettifogging attorney, who holds the position of his steward.  The next thing that generally happens is that the manager falls in love with the prima donna; and the progress of this important amour gives ample employment to the curiosity of the gossips.