The Great Musicians: Rossini and His School - The Original Classic Edition

This biography by Henry Sutherland Edwards (1828-1906) was unusual because of the addition of the School: most of the other books dealt with an individual composer, but Edwards discusses Bellini and provides chapters on Donizetti and Verdi (still alive, and at the height of his powers, at the time this book was published) as well as his main subject.

The book covers Rossinis life and deals in detail with what the author regarded as his most significant works - a selection which may surprise or even outrage Rossini enthusiasts today.

Henry Sutherland Edwards (1828-1906) was a British journalist. He was born in London, and educated in London and France. He was correspondent of The Times at the coronation of Alexander II of Russia, in the camp of the insurgents at Warsaw (1862-63), and at German army headquarters during the Franco-Prussian War.

This is a high quality book of the original classic edition.

This is a freshly published edition of this culturally important work, which is now, at last, again available to you.

Enjoy this classic work. These few paragraphs distill the contents and give you a quick look inside:

Opera could not at that time boast a history of more than about two centuries, and though it had made great progress during the previous hundred years and was scarcely the same entertainment as that which the most illustrious nobles in Italy had taken under their protection in the early part of the seventeenth century, it was still far from resembling the opera of the present day; so much more developed, so much more elaborated.

...Without going back to the origin of music in general, it may not be inappropriate, in connection with Rossinis innovations, and with a view to these innovations being better understood, to sketch in the briefest manner the history of the musical drama in Italy from its deliberate invention until, after its various developments, it became what Rossini made it between the years 1813, the year in which Tancredi was brought out, and 1823, the date of the production of Semiramide.

...From Scarlatti (end of the seventeenth to the middle of the eighteenth century) to the immediate predecessors of Rossini, the history of the development of the opera in Italy is indeed the history of its development at Naples; and though, unlike previous celebrated composers, Rossini did not pursue his studies at Naples, he soon made Naples his head-quarters, and produced at the San Carlo theatre between the years 1815 and 1823 all his best Italian operas in the serious style: Otello, for instance, La Donna del Lago and Semiramide.