ROSSINI AND THE ITALIAN SCHOOL

People love to dunk on Rossini for choosing gorgeous melody over hard‑nosed drama. But he also pushed bel canto forward: instead of letting singers freestyle ornaments, he wrote arias note‑for‑note and insisted they be sung as written. When *The Barber of Seville* got booed at its first outing, he shrugged and went home to sleep—and when critics accused him of breaking “musical grammar,” he snapped: then reform your grammar.