Gioachino Rossini Leap Year 2012

Gioachino Rossini was without doubt the most famous operatic composer of his day and on the occasion of his birthday Google is honouring him with a doodle. He is famously known with the name Italian Mozart. He could only celebrate 19 birthdays on the actual day that he was born. He had a prodigious output: he wrote 38 operas in the 14 years between 1815 and 1829.

The Google doodle depicts the act of playing a scene of Barber of Seville set in a forest. And another interesting fact about this doodle is it has four frogs, which is Google’s tradition for Leap year’s doodle. The frog with the blond hair is shown “leap” into the air while singing the song. The frog sitting in the barber’s chair is Count Almaviva and the barber frog is Figaro, the hero of Barber of Seville.

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. The boy had three years of instruction in the playing of the harpsichord from Giuseppe Prinetti.

He retired, at 38 years old after writing 38 opera’s, he became a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these two passions fully once he retired. Even today there are so many dished with the appendage “alla Rossini” are being served in many restaurants. Probably the most famous of these is Tournedos Rossini. He died at the age of 76 from pneumonia at Passy on Friday, 13 November 1868. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. In 1887, his remains were moved to the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze.

The Barber of Seville is his most famous work, and each of you must have heard it before – more on this later.  It’s believed that Rossini wrote the entire opera in just three weeks.  While the story was old by then – Mozart himself had written the Marriage of Figaro decades prior to this – Rossini’s arc of the slow, quiet start with an almost manic finish made this one of his most popular works.