A conductor's baton once used by
19th-century opera composer Gioachino Rossini is set to be put
up for auction online with a reserve price of 1,500 euros, the
Florence-based auction house said Wednesday.
The ebony, ivory and mother-of-pearl baton was awarded to the
Barber of Seville author by the town of Passy near Paris where
he had a villa and died in 1868 aged 76.
It will be sold by the Gonnelli auction house, based in the
Tuscan capital.
Also up for sale on April 19-21 will be antique books, graphic
works, autographs, musical documents and another Rossini
souvenir: an invitation to rehearsals for his Petite Messe
Solennelle (1863), one of the many pieces of sacred music he
also penned, and his last major composition.
Rossi is best known for his early comic operas L'italiana in
Algeri, Il barbiere di Siviglia (known in English as The Barber
of Seville) and La Cenerentola, which brought to a peak the
opera buffa tradition he inherited from masters such as Domenico
Cimarosa and Giovanni Paisiello.
He also composed opera seria works such as Otello, Tancredi and
Semiramide.
In 1824 he was contracted by the Opéra in Paris, for which he
produced an opera to celebrate the coronation of Charles X, Il
viaggio a Reims (later cannibalised for his first opera in
French, Le comte Ory), revisions of two of his Italian operas,
Le siège de Corinthe and Moïse, and in 1829 his last opera,
Guillaume Tell.
He remains one of the most popular Italian opera composers.
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