Italian opera in bringing the art form back to life again. Romantic opera, which placed emphasis on the imagination and the emotions began to appear in the early 19th century, and because of its arias and music, gave more dimension to the extreme emotions which typified the theater of that era. In addition, it is said that fine music often excused glaring faults in character drawing and plot lines. Gioachino Rossini (1792–1868) initiated the Romantic period. His first success was an "opera buffa" (comic opera), "La Cambiale di Matrimonio" (1810). His reputation still survives today through his "Barber of Seville" (1816), and
Demetrio e Polibio Demetrio e Polibio Demetrio e Polibio (; "Demetrius and Polybius") is a two-act operatic "dramma serio" by Gioachino Rossini to a libretto by Vincenzina Viganò-Mombelli. The opera was orchestrated for strings only. "Demetrio e Polibio" was Rossini's first attempt at a full-scale opera, "assembled piecemeal" during his student days at the Philharmonic Academy of Bologna in 1806. Because it was commissioned by tenor Domenico Mombelli (whose wife wrote the libretto) and was performed privately by Mombelli and his two daughters, a performance which Rossini did not attend, it was not his first fully staged opera. The opera was not professionally