“The construction of these newly-invented pieces is essentially different from the old.  The dialogue, which used to be carried on in recitative, and which, in Metastasio’s operas, is often so beautiful and interesting, and now cut up (and rendered unintelligible if it were worth listening to) into pezzi concertati, or long singing conversations, which present a tedious succession of unconnected, ever-changing motives, having nothing to do with each other; and if a satisfactory air is for a moment introduced, which the ear would like to dwell upon, to hear modulated, varied, and again returned to, it is broken off, before it is well understood, by a sudden transition in an entirely different melody, time, and key, and recurs no more, so that no impression can be made, or recollection of it preserved.  Single songs are almost exploded....  Even the prima donna, who formerly would have complained at having less than three or four airs allotted to her, is now satisfied with having one single cavatina given to her during the whole opera.”

In “Otello,” Rossini introduced his operatic changes to the Italian public, and they were well received; yet great opposition was manifested by those who clung to the time-honored canons.  Sigismondi, of the Naples Conservatory, was horror-stricken on first seeing the score of this opera.  The clarionets were too much for him, but on seeing third and fourth horn-parts, he exclaimed:  “What does the man want?  The greatest of our composers have always been contented with two.  Shades of Pergolesi, of Leo, of Jomelli!  How they must shudder at the bare thought!  Four horns!  Are we at a hunting-party?  Four horns!  Enough to blow us to perdition!” Donizetti, who was Sigismondi’s pupil, also tells an amusing incident of his preceptor’s disgust.  He was turning over a score of “Semiramide” in the library, when the maestro came in and asked him what music it was.  “Rossini’s,” was the answer.  Sigismondi glanced at the page and saw 1. 2. 3. trumpets, being the first, second, and third trumpet parts.  Aghast, he shouted, stuffing his fingers in his ears, “One hundred and twenty-three trumpets! Corpo di Cristo! the world’s gone mad, and I shall go mad too!” And so he rushed from the room, muttering to himself about the hundred and twenty-three trumpets.

The Italian public, in spite of such criticism, very soon accepted the opera of “Otello” as the greatest serious opera ever written for their stage.  It owed much, however, to the singers who illustrated its roles.  Mme. Colbran, afterward Rossini’s wife, sang Desdemona, and Davide, Otello.  The latter was the predecessor of Rubini as the finest singer of the Rossinian music.  He had the prodigious compass of three octaves; and M. Bertin, a French critic, says of this singer, so honorably linked with the career of our composer:  “He is full of warmth, verve, energy, expression, and musical sentiment; alone he can fill up and give life to a scene; it is impossible for another singer to carry away an audience as he does, and, when he will only be simple, he is admirable.  He is the Rossini of song; he is the greatest singer I ever heard.”  Lord Byron, in one of his letters to Moore, speaks of the first production at Milan, and praises the music enthusiastically, while condemning the libretto as a degradation of Shakespeare.