Rossini, his life and times / Nicholas Till [first edition]

Gioacchino Rossini is known to most people as the composer of the ever popular William tell overture, and of one of the best loved of all the comic operas, the Barber of Seville. Using illustrations and contemporary accounts and documents, this biography attempts to explain the reasons for Rossini's success, popularity and fame, setting his life and works within the context of his times, and in so doing, draws a persuasive picture of musical life in Italy and Europe in the years that followed the fall of Napoleon. From it emerges also a portrait of a warm and witty personality, that of Rossini himself.