Cesare Sterbini to the music of Francesco Basili in 1820. He died in Rome on 19 January 1831. Cesare Sterbini Cesare Sterbini (born 1784 in Rome – January 19, 1831) was an Italian writer and librettist. Possessing a deep knowledge of classical and contemporary culture, philosophy, linguistics, he was fluent in Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. He is best known as the librettist for two operas by Gioachino Rossini: "Torvaldo e Dorliska" (1815) and "The Barber of Seville" (1816). An official in the Pontifical Administration, he also set poetry to music as an amateur. He wrote the libretto to the opera
Gioachino Rossini produced 20 operas. Of these, "Otello" formed the climax to his reform of serious opera ("opera seria"), and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time, the tragic ending was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to "Otello". Conditions of stage production in 1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of Cinderella for a libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera "La Cenerentola"