_Il Barbiere_, with its witty and amusing plot and its entertaining and brilliant music, is one of the few operas by Rossini performed at the present time. It gives genuine expression in music to Beaumarchais’ comedy--a comedy of gallantry, not of love--and the music is developed out of the action of the story. So perfect is the unity of the work in this respect that its coloratura arias, such as the celebrated one of Rosine’s, do not even appear as a concession made to virtuoso technique. One admirer speaks of the score, in language perhaps a trifle exaggerated, as ‘a glittering, multicolored bird of paradise, who had dipped his glowing plumage in the rose of the dawn and the laughing, glorious sunshine,’ and says that ‘each note is like a dewdrop quivering on a rose-leaf.’ Stendhal says: ‘Rossini has had the happy thought, whether by chance or deliberate intention, of being primarily himself in the “Barber of Seville.” In seeking an intimate acquaintance with Rossini’s style we should look for it in this score.’ In _Otello_, which offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject by Verdi at a similar point of his artistic development, the transition from _recitativo secco_ to pure recitative, begun in _Elisabetta_, was carried to completion. Shakespeare’s tragedy was, in a measure, ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday,’ the Roman public of Rossini’s day insisting on happy endings, which therefore had to be invented. And it is claimed that there are still places in Italy in which the Shakespearian end of the story can never be performed without interruption from the audience, who warn Desdemona of Otello’s deadly approach. _Otello_ is essentially a melodrama. In his music Rossini has portrayed a drama of action rather than a tragedy. There is no inner psychological development, but an easily grasped tale of passion of much scenic effect, though in some of the dramatic scenes the passionate accent is smothered beneath roulades. But if the musical Othello himself is unconvincing from the tragic point of view, in Desdemona Rossini has portrayed in music a character of real tragic beauty and elevation. Two great artists, Pasta and Malibran, have immortalized the rôle--‘Pasta, imposing and severe as grief itself,’ and Malibran, more restless and impetuous, ‘rushing up trembling, bathed in her tears and tresses.’ _Semiramide_ composed in forty days to a libretto by Rossi,[70] gains a special interest because of its strong leaven of Mozart. In Rossini’s own day and long afterward it was considered his best _opera seria_, always excepting _Tell_. The judgment of our own day largely agrees in looking upon it as an almost perfect example of the _rococo_ style in music. Rossini’s removal to Paris in 1824, when he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens, marks the beginning of another stage of his development, one that produced but a single opera, _Guillaume Tell_, but that one a masterpiece.