ROSSINI 



poems have a beauty of language that is I 

 described as word painting. In both forms of 

 his art he expressed unreservedly his individu- 

 ality. 



Consult Gary's The Rossettia ; essays by Walter 

 Pater in Ward's English Poets. 



ROSSINI, ro/i.s'm, GIOACHINO ANTONIO 

 (1792-1868). an Italian composer, was born at 

 Pesaro. His mother was the daughter of the 

 town baker and his father was the town trump- 

 eter, who played with strolling musicians in 

 summer and thus made enough money to keep 

 the family during the winter. At the age of ' 

 ten Rossini played a horn with these rough 

 wanderers, and the lawless life he led showed 

 its impression later in his personal conduct as 

 well as in his operas. When he was twelve 

 years old he went to Bologna to study music, 

 and two years later could sing at sight any 

 composition placed before him. He was com- 

 pelled by his teachers to study counterpoint, 

 :t subject which he detested, and as soon as he 

 had learned enough of it to compose operas he 

 refused further musical training and ended his 

 - as a student. In after years his operas 

 revealed his ignorance of many points in com- 

 position, but as he was a man of much vanity 

 he never seemed to realize his weaknesses. 



When he was eighteen years old he wrote his 

 first opera, Dcmetrio, but it was in his twen- 

 tieth year that he began to show marvelous 

 inventive powers. In that one year of 1812 he 

 composed five operas, one of which was Tan- 

 credi, a story of the Crusades, which was a re- 

 markable success. In 1816 and 1817 Rossini 

 had a contract to write two operas each year 

 for a theater at Milan, and during that period 

 produced such highly popular compositions as 

 The Barber oj Seville and Otello. During the 

 next five years he wrote with great rapidity 

 such operas as- Moses in Egypt, Ermione and 

 The Lady oj the Lake, the latter based on 

 Scott's famous poem. These successful works 

 all appeared before Rossini's thirtieth birthday. 

 In 1822 he married a very wealthy woman, and 

 soon went to Vienna to direct the production 

 of his Zelmira. Beethoven, then living in 

 Vienna, was, for the time being, practically for- 

 gotten in the enthusiasm for the new com- 

 poser. 



Rossini's popularity, however, began suddenly 

 to wane. His indolence prevented him from 

 inventing new themes ; he was constantly patch- 

 ing together bits of old airs to make new ones; 

 his unrestrained habits shocked many people; 

 his vanity and praise of himself disgusted 



ROSTAND 



others. Having squandered his wife's fortune, 

 he plunged into debt, and then took the pains 

 to write a really excellent opera, Scmiramide. 

 But the Italian people received it coldly, and 

 Rossini, in disgust, went to England. There 

 his operas were a failure, but he used his fame 

 so shrewdly in giving lessons that he cleared 

 $50,000 in five months. He then proceeded to 

 Paris, where by skilful advertising he had him- 

 self appointed director of the Italian opera and 

 procured from the government an annual pen- 

 sion of $4,000. He became too indolent to 

 write anything new and again patched parts of 

 his former works together until the Italian 

 Opera House was ruined financially. An at- 

 tempt to stop his pension caused hiin to bring 

 suit against the government to retain it, and 

 during the six years of the trial he lived in a 

 garret reached only by a frail ladder. This was 

 to make the public believe him in poverty; 

 but it deceived nobody, for it was well known 

 that he owned at Bologna a palace in which the 

 silverware alone was valued at $100,000. He 

 won his suit and in 1836 returned to Italy, 

 where, rich but miserable, he spent his last 

 days. R.D.M. 



Consult Sevan's Rossini; Edwards' The Life of 

 Rossini. 



ROSS 'LAND, a mining community in the 

 West Kootenay district, British Columbia. It 

 is six miles north of the United States bound- 

 ary and fifty-five miles by rail southwest of 

 Nelson, B. C. It is served by branches of the 

 Canadian Pacific and Great Northern railways. 

 Rossland is the center of the gold-copper min- 

 ing district, and when this section was first 

 opened it grew rapidly. The city was incor- 

 porated in 1897, and in 1901 had a population 

 of over 6,000. After the boom was over the 

 population slowly declined, but the mines are 

 still producing and the city is still prosperous. 

 Population in 1911, 2,826; in 1916, about 3,500. 



ROSTAND, rohstahN' , EDMOND (1869-1918), 

 a French writer of plays and poetry, and the 

 son of a prominent journalist, was born in 

 Marseilles. Rostand's first play, a comedy in 

 verse, was produced in Paris in 1894, and was 

 immensely successful. Both this and his later 

 plays proved him a skilful dramatist, a satirist 

 and a poet. Three other plays followed in 

 quick succession, and then came his greatest 

 success, Cyrano de Bergerac, a "heroic comedy" 

 in verse, which was produced by the famous 

 French comedian, Coquelin, who also played 

 the leading part. The play was quickly trans- 

 lated into English, German, Russian and other 



