Giacomo Meyerbeer his family. He arrived in Italy at the beginning of 1816, after visits to Paris and London, where he heard Cramer play. In Paris, he wrote to a friend, 'I go from museum to museum, library to library, theatre to theatre, with the restlessness of the Wandering Jew'. During his years in Italy Meyerbeer became acquainted with, and impressed by, the works of his contemporary Gioachino Rossini, who by 1816, at the age of 24, was already director of both major opera houses in Naples and in the same year premiered his operas "The Barber of Seville" and "Otello". Meyerbeer
Gioachino Rossini was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's "Kenilworth". The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the arias instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the "secco" recitative was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet. Rossini's most famous opera was produced on 20 February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The libretto, a version of Beaumarchais' stage play "Le Barbier de Séville", was newly written by Cesare