[65] Richard Wagner, Essay ‘Beethoven.’ CHAPTER V OPERATIC DEVELOPMENT IN ITALY AND FRANCE Italian opera at the advent of Rossini--Rossini and the Italian operatic renaissance; _Guillaume Tell_--Donizetti and Bellini--Spontini and the historical opera--Meyerbeer’s life and works--His influence and followers--Development of _opéra comique_; Auber, Hérold, Adam. Operatic development in Italy and France during the first half of the nineteenth century represents, broadly speaking, the development of the romantic ideal by Rossini and Meyerbeer; a breaking away from classic and traditional forms; and the growth of individual freedom in musical expression. Rossini, as shown by subsequent detailed consideration of his works and the reforms they introduced, overthrows the time-honored operatic conventions of his day and breathes new life into Italian dramatic art. Spontini, ‘the last great classicist of the lyric stage,’ nevertheless forecasts French grand opera in his extensive historical scores. And French grand opera (as will be shown) is established as a definite type, and given shape and coherence by Rossini in _Tell_, by Meyerbeer in _Robert_, _Les Huguenots_, _Le Prophète_, and _l’Africaine_. In this period the classical movement, interpreting in a manner the general trend of musical feeling in the eighteenth century, merges into the romantic movement, expressing that of the nineteenth. A widespread, independent rather than interdependent, musical activity in many directions at one and the same time explains such apparent contradictions as Beethoven and Rossini, Schubert, Cherubini, Spontini, Weber and Meyerbeer, all creating simultaneously. To understand the operatic reforms of Rossini and their later development a _résumé_ of the leading characteristics of the Italian opera of his day is necessary.