In _Otello_, which offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject by Verdi at a similar point of his artistic development, the transition from _recitativo secco_ to pure recitative, begun in _Elisabetta_, was carried to completion. Shakespeare’s tragedy was, in a measure, ‘butchered to make a Roman holiday,’ the Roman public of Rossini’s day insisting on happy endings, which therefore had to be invented. And it is claimed that there are still places in Italy in which the Shakespearian end of the story can never be performed without interruption from the audience, who warn Desdemona of Otello’s deadly approach. _Otello_ is essentially a melodrama. In his music Rossini has portrayed a drama of action rather than a tragedy. There is no inner psychological development, but an easily grasped tale of passion of much scenic effect, though in some of the dramatic scenes the passionate accent is smothered beneath roulades. But if the musical Othello himself is unconvincing from the tragic point of view, in Desdemona Rossini has portrayed in music a character of real tragic beauty and elevation. Two great artists, Pasta and Malibran, have immortalized the rôle--‘Pasta, imposing and severe as grief itself,’ and Malibran, more restless and impetuous, ‘rushing up trembling, bathed in her tears and tresses.’ _Semiramide_ composed in forty days to a libretto by Rossi,[70] gains a special interest because of its strong leaven of Mozart. In Rossini’s own day and long afterward it was considered his best _opera seria_, always excepting _Tell_. The judgment of our own day largely agrees in looking upon it as an almost perfect example of the _rococo_ style in music.
Rossini’s removal to Paris in 1824, when he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens, marks the beginning of another stage of his development, one that produced but a single opera, _Guillaume Tell_, but that one a masterpiece.
Owing to Rossini’s activity in his new position, which he held for only eighteen months, the technical standard of performance was decidedly raised. Among the works he produced were _Il viaggio a Reims_ (1825), heard again three years later in a revised and augmented version as _Le Comte Ory_, and Meyerbeer’s _Il Crociato_, the first work of that composer to be heard in Paris. In 1826 Charles X appointed him ‘first composer to the king’ and ‘inspector-general of singing in France,’ two sinecures the combined salaries of which amounted to twenty thousand francs. Rossini, who had a keen sense of humor, is said to have been in the habit of stopping in the street, when some pavement singer raised his voice, or the sound of song floated down from some open window, and whispering to his friends to be silent ‘because the inspector of singing was busy gathering material for his next official report.’