For this coterie Rossini and
Meyerbeer were suspects, intruders, who must be repulsed at any
cost. The government had the good sense to take no account of this
ridiculous opposition, which refused to recognize that art should
be cosmopolitan. Before seeing his name on the bills of our first
lyric stage, Rossini required no less than nine years of patience.
All Europe applauded him, but at Paris he had to face the fire of
pamphleteers rendered furious by his fame. The government finally
forced the Opera to mount Le Siege de Corinthe. Its success was so
striking that the evening of the first representation (October 9,
1826), the public made almost a riot for half an hour, because
Rossini, called loudly by an enthusiastic crowd, refused to appear
upon the stage.
The maestro gave at the Opera Moise, March 26, 1826; Le Comte Ory,
August 20, 1828; Guillaume Tell, August 20, 1829. (At this time
the first representations of the most important works took place
in midsummer.) The evening of the first night of Guillaume Tell,
the orchestra went, after the opera, to give a serenade under the
windows of the composer, who occupied the house on the Boulevard
Montmartre, through which the Passage Jouffroy has since been cut.
The 10th of February, 1868, on the occasion of the hundredth
representation of the same work, there was a repetition of the
serenade of 1829.
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