Gioachino Rossini is one of history's best-loved opera composers, and his overtures are the perfect place to get a flavour of them. Find out why with our guide to his best ones! You can't get very far ...

As it reaches Volume 3, the brilliant Naxos series of complete Rossini Overtures is increasingly acclaimed and seems now unstoppable in its march towards being not only the finest collection of ...

Dazzling recordings of favourite and less well-known overtures. Classic FM Drive Featured Album, 20 January 2014. The Prague Sinfonia Orchestra are on a mission to record all of Rossini’s overtures ...

If there is a familiar template to the structure of most of Rossini’s opera overtures, Antonio Pappano and his Rome orchestra reveal that there is much more than rum-ti-tum routine in their musical ...

(La) Scala di seta, '(The) Silken Ladder', Movements: Overture Santa Cecilia Academy Orchestra, Rome Antonio Pappano, Conductor Gioachino Rossini, Composer (Il) Signor Bruschino (or Il figlio per ...

There's also a bonus in the little-known chamber-scale piece, Andante E Tema Con Variazioni In E-Flat Major. Pappano believes that his orchestra has a 'direct line' to the composer, truly grasping the ...

LATE last November I raved about Volume One of a new Naxos project to record all of Rossini's overtures in a four-volume set. The standard of Prague playing with conductor Christian Benda was ...

I've always had a soft spot for Gioacchino Rossini's overtures. Their slow introductions and sprightly melodies invariably lead to a big crescendo passage, in which Rossini repeats a motif several ...

From the Marriage of Figaro to Carmen, here are ten of the most memorable musical beginnings to operas. The lights in the theatre dim and a hush falls over the buzzing excitement of the audience, as ...