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
Gioachino Rossini wife died in 1845, and on 16 August 1846, he married Olympe Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of "Judith and Holofernes". Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he settled in Paris in 1855, where he hosted many artistic and literary figures in his apartment at 2 Rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin. Among them was the forty years younger Belgian mattauphone virtuoso Edmond Michotte, whom Rossini considered his "quasi figlio". Rossini had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these