With all its faults the music of these eighteenth century masters excelled in a certain gracious suavity. Cimarosa, Paesiello and their contemporaries represent the perfection of the older Italian _opera buffa_, the classical Italian comic opera with secco-recitative, developed by Logroscino, Pergolesi, and Jommelli, a form which then reigned triumphant in all the large capitals of Europe. In the more artificial _opera seria_ as well Cimarosa and Paesiello in particular achieved notable successes, and their works are the link which connects Italian opera with the most glorious period the lyric drama has known since the elevation of both Italian and German schools. But the criticism of the Abbé Arnaud, who said, ‘These operas, for which their drama is only a pretext, are nothing but concerts,’ is altogether just. The reforms of Gluck and the romantic movement in Germany in no wise disturbed the trend of Italian operatic composition. Weber’s influence was negligible, for Italian operatic composers were, as a rule, indifferent to what was going on, musically, outside their own land. Those who, like Francesco Morlacchi (1784-1841) or the Bavarian Simon Mayr (1763-1845), were brought into contact with Weber or his works, showed their indebtedness to him rather in their endeavors to secure broader and more interesting harmonic development of their melodies and greater orchestral color than in any direct working out of his ideals. But one native Italian was destined to exert an influence, the constructive power of which, within the confines of his own land, equalled that exerted by Weber in Germany. The time was at hand when in Italy, the citadel of operatic conventionality and formalism, a reaction against vapidity of idea, affectation, and worn-out sentimentality was to find its leaders in Rossini, the ‘Swan of Pesaro,’ and his followers and disciples, Bellini and Donizetti. I Gioacchino Antonio Rossini, his father a trumpeter, his mother a baker’s daughter, was born in Pesaro, February 29, 1792, and had his first musical instruction, on the harpsichord, from Prinetti, a musician of Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only and fell asleep while giving lessons. He soon left his first teacher, but when, at the age of fifteen, he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre P. S. Mattei, he read well at sight, and could play both the pianoforte and the horn. At the Conservatory of Bologna, under Cavedagni, he also learned to play the 'cello with ease.