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 as successful as "Barbiere". The absence of a similar precaution in construction of his "Mosè in Egitto" led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus ""Dal tuo stellato soglio"" to divert attention from the dividing waves. In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married the renowned opera singer Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he moved from Italy to Vienna, where his operas were the