6. Retirement.

And then, silence. For almost 40 years Rossini lived on, lauded by many, execrated by some, begged to compose; but no more operas issued from his pen. There are no simple reasons for such a personal decision, if indeed it was consciously made. That Rossini was tired in body and mind, indeed was a semi-invalid for much of the rest of his life, was partly responsible. His rate of composition of operas diminished significantly during his active career, from an average of three new operas a year from 1811 to 1819 to only one a year from 1820 to 1823, and even fewer in Paris. The death of his mother on 20 February 1827, during rehearsals for Moïse, had already thrown the composer into a difficult psychological state, and Tell absorbed more of his energy than any other work. Letters and contemporary reports show that while Rossini composed this opera he was already thinking of terminating his theatrical career. The financial security he had now gained may also have been a contributory cause.

Political and artistic events of the next years probably solidified his resolve to abandon his career at its height. On 4 May 1829, before the première of Tell, he had negotiated a contract with the government of Charles X, in which he was assured a lifetime annuity, independent of his activities, although he did declare his readiness to write at least four additional operas, one every other year, for the Opéra. During negotiations he had threatened to withdraw Guillaume Tell before its performance if the annuity was not guaranteed. With the agreements signed and Tell launched, Rossini and his wife returned to Bologna for a vacation, his next Parisian opera scheduled for 1831. He contemplated composing a Faust based on Goethe, but never received a completed libretto. Instead, his vacation was abruptly shattered by news of the 1830 Revolution, in which Charles X was dethroned and contracts under the old regime were suspended. In early September 1830 Rossini left for Paris alone, relations with his wife having grown strained. He hoped quickly to regulate his financial affairs, but the courts did not decide the future of his annuity until six years later.

The administration of the Opéra had changed hands. Rossini had been so closely associated with the old regime that his influence there was gone, but he maintained ties with the Théâtre Italien, actively supporting the production of works by his younger contemporaries, particularly Donizetti and Bellini. Mostly he was kept in Paris by a protracted legal battle to maintain his right to the annuity provided by Charles X. He composed little; two works, the Stabat mater and the Soirées musicales, were important. During a trip to Spain in 1831 with his banker friend Alexandre Aguado, Rossini was commissioned by Fernandez Varela, a state counsellor, to set the Stabat mater. He wrote only half the score (nos.1 and 5–9) before asking his friend Giovanni Tadolini to complete six additional movements. It was almost ten years before Rossini replaced Tadolini's handiwork, and then only under pressure from his Parisian publisher, Eugène Troupenas. Rossini's conduct was not motivated by pure laziness. By 1832 he was not well, and, whether psychological or not, his ills augured a period of morbid sickness that lasted for 25 years. In this sickness he was nursed and comforted by Olympe Pélissier. Their long affair began in Paris early in the 1830s, and in 1832 Rossini dedicated to her a cantata for soprano and piano, Giovanna d'Arco. Recently a group of some 25 letters from Rossini to Olympe from the 1830s surfaced in the Fondo Rossini-Hentsch of the G. Mahler library in Paris. They bear witness to the growing love between the two, a love that culminated in their marriage in 1846, after the death of Isabella Colbran.

In Paris Rossini did complete the set of eight chamber arias and four duets known as the Soirées musicales, pieces which prove that his departure from the operatic stage had nothing to do with any decline in his inspiration. They embrace a wide range of moods: the dramatic Li marinari, the Tyrolean La pastorella dell'Alpi, the Neapolitan abandon of the ever-popular La danza. Melodically attractive, they are filled with beautiful details manifesting Rossini's skill; note, for example, the unanticipated G and D harmonies near the end of the B major La serenata. These pieces were probably composed individually for various society figures during the early 1830s and then collected into a volume for publication by Troupenas in 1835.

All these factors – illness, changes in the artistic and political climate, financial security, general exhaustion – together with the enormous success of Meyerbeer's first French operas, Robert le diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836), which took to an extreme many techniques of Tell while abandoning the ‘Classical’ tendencies of that opera, created a physical and artistic climate in which the composition of new operas had little savour for Rossini. But the reports of rivalry between Rossini and Meyerbeer seem fundamentally false. Whatever he thought about Meyerbeer's ‘grand operas’, Rossini remained on good personal terms with Meyerbeer from 1825, when he introduced him to the Parisian public, until his death in 1864, for which Rossini composed a Chant funèbre.

With the pension affair settled in his favour, Rossini took a short trip to Germany with another banker, Lionel de Rothschild, meeting both Mendelssohn and Hiller. Mendelssohn, despite himself, came away enormously impressed, writing to his mother and sister: ‘intelligence, vivacity and polish at all times and in every word; and whoever doesn't think him a genius must hear him hold forth only once, and he'll change his mind immediately’. Hiller became a lifelong friend. By the end of summer 1836 Rossini returned to Paris to tidy up his affairs, departing again on 24 October for Italy. He did not take Olympe at first, but soon afterwards, in February 1837, she followed him to Bologna.

An account of the events of Rossini's life between the time he left Paris and his return in 1855 makes depressing reading. He was continually ill, did almost nothing, seemed indeed to be living on the brink of spiritual, if not physical, death. He and Olympe established a salon in Milan during winter 1837–8 and gave a number of musical soirées similar in style to the more famous Parisian ones of the 1860s. But the death of his father in 1839 further weakened Rossini. His only activity was as honorary consultant to the Bologna Liceo Musicale. There, starting in 1840, he attempted to regenerate the conservatory and improve its curriculum. It is known that he played at least a small role in the performance of his works there, since in the library of the conservatory is a set of orchestral parts for the quartet from Bianca e Falliero, ‘Cielo, il mio labbro ispira’, in which the part for second horn is in Rossini's hand. A note on the manuscript reads: ‘Original writing of Rossini. May 1844’. But his health was poor, urethral disorders in particular requiring prolonged and painful treatment, and so Rossini could do little for the conservatory.

When, after the death of Varela, the original version of the Stabat mater fell into the hands of the Parisian publisher Aulagnier, who printed it and arranged a performance, Rossini, partly at the prompting of Troupenas and partly because the work published by Aulagnier was a composite, disowned this version and decided to complete the work himself. The revised Stabat mater was ready by the end of 1841. The first performance, arranged by the brothers Léon and Marie Escudier, was in Paris at the Théâtre Italien on 7 January 1842. It was received with enormous enthusiasm. The first Italian performance, at Bologna, followed in March under the direction of Donizetti. Among the soloists were Clara Novello and Nikolay Ivanov, who became a close friend of Rossini and for whom, at Rossini's request, Verdi expressly composed some substitute arias. Donizetti, reporting the reception of the Stabat mater in Bologna, wrote:

The enthusiasm is impossible to describe. Even at the final rehearsal, which Rossini attended, in the middle of the day, he was accompanied to his home to the shouting of more than 500 persons. The same thing the first night, under his window, since he did not appear in the hall …

The Stabat mater is often said to be operatic. If by this is meant that the work is lyrical rather than symphonic in conception, it seems a harmless statement. But it is important to recognize that the statement is really a disguised attack on its style, affirming by implication that the piece is neither specifically religious in quality nor deeply felt. Leaving aside the thorny problem of what is theoretically appropriate for religious music, Rossini's setting of the Stabat mater contains almost no music that would normally enter into his operas, whether for reasons of structure, orchestration, melody, use of chorus or a host of other considerations. No doubt the tenor aria ‘Cujus animam’ is melodically rich, but no similar Andantino maestoso movement exists in any Rossini opera, especially with the wealth of orchestral detail present here. One need not point to the specifically ‘sacred’ conceptions, the magnificent unaccompanied quartet, ‘Quando corpus morietur’, with its sinking chromatic lines, the final choral fugue on ‘In sempiterna saecula amen’ (fig.9), or the dramatic interaction between soprano and chorus in ‘Inflammatus’, in order to recognize that Rossini was striving to apply his artistic talents to the service of sacred music. From beginning to end there is a spirit quite unlike that of the operatic world that Rossini had abandoned a decade before completing his hymn to the Virgin. The opening movement, beginning with the dark sonority of cellos doubled by bassoons leading to the tutti at ‘juxta crucem lacrimosa’, is a stunning testimony to the vitality and success of his efforts.

Though it did not stir Rossini to further composition, he seems to have been genuinely moved by its triumph. He was particularly grateful to Donizetti for directing the Bolognese performance, but was unsuccessful in convincing the younger maestro to assume the directorship of the Bologna Conservatory. Physically Rossini remained weak, and in search of medical help he travelled with Olympe to Paris in 1843. They soon returned to Italy, where Rossini remained indolent. In 1845 Isabella Colbran died, and on 16 August 1846 Rossini married Olympe Pélissier, with whom he had now lived for almost 15 years. He composed some trifles, mostly drawn from earlier works, adapting the famous ‘Coro dei Bardi’ from La donna del lago to unveil a monument to Tasso in 1844 and to praise Pope Pius IX in 1846, who was (for a brief time) thought to represent progressive political tendencies. Rossini also prepared a significant cantata in honour of the new pope, largely derived from pieces in his operas, Ricciardo e Zoraide, Armida, Ermione and Le siège de Corinthe. It was performed in Rome, at the Campidoglio, on 1 January 1847. A complete manuscript of the cantata recently came to light, and the work has proved to be more successful in modern revivals than one might have suspected.

The revolutionary movements that swept Italy in 1848 marked a significant turning-point in Rossini's life. He found himself out of favour with many Bolognese townsmen for what they considered his lack of enthusiasm towards the movement for national unity. Prompted by demonstrations directed against them, the Rossinis left Bologna for Florence. He always recalled this period in extremely morbid terms, claiming that his life and that of his wife had been in danger, and speaking of the Bolognese as assassins. The incident, together with his physical ills, further demoralized him. He stayed with Olympe in Florence or took cures at Montecatini or Lucca. Contemporary reports about him (from Emilia Branca Romani, Giuseppina Strepponi and many others) give uniformly depressing and pessimistic accounts. In a letter of 1854 Rossini wrote of ‘the deplorable state of health in which I find myself for five long months, a most obstinate nervous malady that robs me of my sleep and I might say almost renders my life useless’. In the hope that French doctors might be able to help him where the Italians failed, the Rossinis decided to return to Paris in the spring of 1855.

Rossini, Gioachino