In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's The atre, London, he came to England, being much feted on his way through Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to King George IV. and the re ceipt of £7,000 after a residence of five months.
In 1824 he became musical director of the Theatre Italien in Paris at a salary of L800 per annum, and when the agreement came to an end he was appointed chief composer to the king and inspector-general of singing in France. The production of Guil laume Tell in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. The libretto was by Etienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by Armand Marrast. The music is free from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera. In 1829 he returned to Bologna on family business. His return to Paris was delayed by the July Revolution of 183o until November 1830. Six movements of his Stabat Mater were written in 1832 and the rest in 1839, the year of his father's death, and the success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera; but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to 1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives—the life of swift triumph, and the long life of seclu sion, of which the biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish culture, his mask of humility and indifference. His first wife died in 1845, and
political disturbances in the Romagna compelled him to leave Bologna in 1847, the year of his second marriage with Olympe Pelissier, who had sat to Vernet for his picture of "Judith and Holofernes." After living for a time in Florence he settled in Paris in 1855, where his house was a centre of artistic society. He died at Passy on Nov. 13, 1868.
See Stendhal, Vie de Rossini (5823) ; A. Azevedo, G. Rossini, sa vie et ses oeuvres (1865) ; H. de Curzon, Rossini (1920).