Reviews provided by Syndetics

CHOICE Review

Kendall's biography of Rossini will be of interest to general readers, opera fans, and undergraduates. The author has provided a detailed examination of Rossini's life and has explored the various reasons behind Rossini's decision to quit composing at the height of his career. Less useful, however, are the analyses and explications of Rossini's operas, which are seriously marred by the complete lack of musical examples. A serviceable catalog of Rossini's works and a brief bibliography conclude the volume. Although this book goes a long way to explain Rossini within the sociology and business practices of the early 19th-century opera industry, it does not supplant earlier works on Rossini, including Herbert Weinstock's Rossini: A Biography (CH, Sep'68), Richard Osborne's Rossini (London, 1986), in the "Master Musicians" series, and the numerous Rossini studies by Philip Gossett. W. E. Grim; Worcester State College

Booklist Review

Rossini (1792-1868) is in all ways a curious case as a composer. As an adolescent prodigy, he composed one successful comic opera after another during the 1810s and became the rage of Europe with his classic Barber of Seville (1816). His subsequent turning to opera seria set the basic dramatic conventions and musical language for Italian opera for the rest of the nineteenth century. Yet by the age of 36, he had largely abandoned composition, and at the time of his death, his fame had fallen into an eclipse that lasted until quite recently. Current musical scholarship has restored Rossini's place in musical tradition and on the operatic stage. The revival of his serious dramatic works (the most famous is William Tell) in the 1980s was one of the most notable developments in recent operatic history. Kendall's life-and-works provides a useful--because accurate and well-written--overview of its subject that well portrays the world of Italian and French opera of the time. It is nicely illustrated, too, and concludes with a catalog of Rossini's works in all forms. ~--John Shreffler