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
Critical edition (opera) Critical edition (opera) A critical edition of an opera has been defined by American musicologist Philip Gossett as "an edition that bases itself wherever possible on the very finest and most accurate sources for an opera. That means that it must study the entire performance history of a work." Gossett continues: The emergence of critical editions of many works from the 19th-century Italian operatic repertory did not begin until the 1950s and resulted from the revival of interest from that time forward in the "bel canto" era—early 1800s to approximately 1850 and known as the "primo ottocento"—written by Gioachino Rossini,