Paris during the Bourbon Restoration "The Barber of Seville", by Gioachino Rossini, at the Théâtre-Italien in 1818, two years after its premiere in Rome. Rossini made modifications for the French audience, changing it from two to four acts and changing Rosina's part from a contralto to a soprano. This new version premiered at the Odeon Theater on 6 May 1824, with Rossini present, and remains today the version most used in opera houses around the world. At the beginning of the Restoration, the Paris Opera was located in the Salle Montansier on rue Richelieu, where the square Louvois is today. On 13 February 1820, the
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