Gioachino Rossini in the context of "L'italiana in Algeri"

Romantic music is a stylistic movement in Western Classical music associated with the period of the 19th century commonly referred to as the Romantic era (or Romantic period). It is closely related to the broader concept of Romanticism—the intellectual, artistic, and literary movement that became prominent in Western culture from about 1798 until 1837.

Romantic composers sought to create music that was individualistic, emotional, dramatic, and often programmatic; reflecting broader trends within the movements of Romantic literature, poetry, art, and philosophy. Romantic music was often ostensibly inspired by (or else sought to evoke) non-musical stimuli, such as nature, literature, poetry, super-natural elements, or the fine arts. It included features such as increased chromaticism and moved away from traditional forms.

I puritani (The Puritans) is an 1835 opera by Vincenzo Bellini. It was originally written in two acts and changed to three acts before the premiere on the advice of Gioachino Rossini, with whom the young composer had become friends. The music was set to a libretto by Count Carlo Pepoli, an Italian émigré poet whom Bellini had met at a salon run by the exile Princess Belgiojoso, which became a meeting place for many Italian revolutionaries. The opera is based on Têtes Rondes et Cavaliers (Roundheads and Cavaliers), a historical play written by Jacques-François Ancelot and Joseph Xavier Saintine and set in the English Civil War. Except for its title, the opera is not in any way based on Walter Scott's 1816 novel Old Mortality (translated into Italian in 1825 as I Puritani di Scozia), despite some claims to the contrary.

When Bellini arrived in Paris in mid-August 1833, he had intended to stay only about three weeks, the main aim being to continue the negotiations with the Paris Opéra which he had begun on his way to London a few months earlier. These negotiations came to nothing, but by October he had decided to spend the winter in Paris, especially as both Il pirata and I Capuleti e i Montecchi were to be given by the Théâtre-Italien that season. The offer from the Théâtre came in January 1834; he accepted because "the pay was richer than what I had received in Italy up to then, though only by a little; then because of so magnificent a company; and finally so as to remain in Paris at others' expense."

Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (/ˈvɛərdi/ VAIR-dee, Italian: [dʒuˈzɛppe ˈverdi]; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto, a small town in the modern province of Parma (at the time a department of the French Empire), to a family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the help of a local patron, Antonio Barezzi. Verdi came to dominate the Italian opera scene after the era of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, and Gaetano Donizetti, whose works significantly influenced him.

In his early operas, Verdi demonstrated sympathy with the Risorgimento movement which sought the unification of Italy. He also served briefly as an elected politician. The chorus "Va, pensiero" from his early opera Nabucco (1842), and similar choruses in later operas, were much in the spirit of the unification movement, and the composer himself became esteemed as a representative of these ideals. An intensely private person, Verdi did not seek to ingratiate himself with popular movements. As he became professionally successful, he was able to reduce his operatic workload and sought to establish himself as a landowner in his native region. He found further fame with the three peaks of his 'middle period': Rigoletto (1851), Il trovatore and La traviata (both 1853). He surprised the musical world by returning, after his success with the opera Aida (1871), with three late masterpieces: his Requiem (1874), and the operas Otello (1887) and Falstaff (1893).

Pesaro (Italian: [ˈpeːzaro] ; Romagnol: Pés're) is a comune (municipality) in the Italian region of Marche, capital of the province of Pesaro and Urbino, on the Adriatic Sea. According to the 2011 census, its population was 95,011, making it the second most populous city in the Marche, after Ancona. Pesaro was dubbed the "Cycling City" (città della bicicletta) by the Italian environmentalist association Legambiente in recognition of its extensive network of bicycle paths and promotion of cycling. It is also known as "City of Music" (città della musica), for it is the birthplace of the composer Gioachino Rossini. In 2015 the Italian Government applied for Pesaro to be declared a "Creative City" in UNESCO's World Heritage Sites. In 2017 Pesaro received the European City of Sport award together with Aosta, Cagliari and Vicenza.

Local industries include fishing, furniture making and tourism. In 2020 it absorbed the former comune of Monteciccardo, now a frazione of Pesaro. Its frazione of Fiorenzuola di Focara is one of I Borghi più belli d'Italia ("The most beautiful villages of Italy").

French opera is both the art of opera in France and opera in the French language. It is one of Europe's most important operatic traditions, containing works by composers of the stature of Rameau, Berlioz, Gounod, Bizet, Massenet, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc and Messiaen. Many foreign-born composers have played a part in the French tradition, including Lully, Gluck, Salieri, Cherubini, Spontini, Meyerbeer, Rossini, Donizetti, Verdi and Offenbach.

French opera began at the court of Louis XIV with Jean-Baptiste Lully's Cadmus et Hermione (1673), although there had been various experiments with the form before that, most notably Pomone by Robert Cambert. Lully and his librettist Quinault created tragédie en musique, a form in which dance music and choral writing were particularly prominent. Lully's most important successor was Rameau. After Rameau's death, Christoph Willibald Gluck was persuaded to produce six operas for the Paris Opera in the 1770s. They show the influence of Rameau, but simplified and with greater focus on the drama. At the same time, by the middle of the 18th century another genre was gaining popularity in France: opéra comique, in which arias alternated with spoken dialogue. By the 1820s, Gluckian influence in France had given way to a taste for the operas of Rossini. Rossini's Guillaume Tell helped found the new genre of Grand opera, a form whose most famous exponent was Giacomo Meyerbeer. Lighter opéra comique also enjoyed tremendous success in the hands of Boieldieu, Auber, Hérold and Adam. In this climate, the operas of Hector Berlioz struggled to gain a hearing. Berlioz's epic masterpiece Les Troyens, the culmination of the Gluckian tradition, was not given a full performance for almost a hundred years after it was written.

Domenico Gaetano Maria Donizetti (29 November 1797 – 8 April 1848) was an Italian composer, best known for his over 70 operas. Along with Gioachino Rossini and Vincenzo Bellini, he was a leading composer of the bel canto opera style during the first half of the nineteenth century and a probable influence on other composers such as Giuseppe Verdi. Donizetti was born in Bergamo in Lombardy. At an early age he was taken up by Simon Mayr who enrolled him with a full scholarship in a school which he had set up. There he received detailed musical training. Mayr was instrumental in obtaining a place for Donizetti at the Bologna Academy, where, at the age of 19, he wrote his first one-act opera, the comedy Il Pigmalione, which may never have been performed during his lifetime.

An offer in 1822 from Domenico Barbaja, the impresario of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, which followed the composer's ninth opera, led to his move to Naples and his residency there until production of Caterina Cornaro in January 1844. In all, 51 of Donizetti's operas were presented in Naples. Before 1830, success came primarily with his comic operas, the serious ones failing to attract significant audiences. His first notable success came with an opera seria, Zoraida di Granata, which was presented in 1822 in Rome. In 1830, when Anna Bolena was first performed, Donizetti made a major impact on the Italian and international opera scene shifting the balance of success away from primarily comedic operas, although even after that date, his best-known works included comedies such as L'elisir d'amore (1832) and Don Pasquale (1843). Significant historical dramas did succeed; they included Lucia di Lammermoor (the first to have a libretto written by Salvadore Cammarano) given in Naples in 1835, and one of the most successful Neapolitan operas, Roberto Devereux in 1837. Up to that point, all of his operas had been set to Italian libretti.

The Dance Class is an 1874 oil painting on canvas by the French artist Edgar Degas. It is in the collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, in New York.

The painting and its companion work in the Musée d'Orsay, Paris, are amongst the most ambitious works by Degas on the theme of ballet. The imaginary scene depicts a dance class being held under the supervision of Jules Perrot, a famous ballet master, in the old Paris Opera, which had actually burnt down the previous year.The poster on the wall for Rossini's Guillaume Tell is a tribute to the operatic singer Jean-Baptiste Faure, who had commissioned the work.

Maria Luigi Carlo Zenobio Salvatore Cherubini (/ˌkɛrʊˈbiːni/ KERR-uu-BEE-nee; Italian: [luˈiːdʒi keruˈbiːni]; 8 or 14 September 1760 – 15 March 1842) was an Italian Classical and Romantic composer. His most significant compositions are operas and sacred music. Beethoven regarded Cherubini as the greatest living composer of his era. Cherubini's operas were heavily praised and interpreted by Rossini.

Italian opera is both the art of opera in Italy and opera in the Italian language. Opera was in Italy around the year 1600 and Italian opera has continued to play a dominant role in the history of the form until the present day. Many famous operas in Italian were written by foreign composers, including Handel, Gluck and Mozart. Works by native Italian composers of the 19th and early 20th centuries, such as Rossini, Bellini, Donizetti, Verdi and Puccini, are amongst the most famous operas ever written and today are performed in opera houses across the world.