Gioachino Rossini

Even before Verdi, Puccini LINK TO SCHEDA and Leoncavallo LINK TO SCHEDA, it was Gioachino Rossini (Pesaro, 29 February 1792 – Passy, ​​13 November 1868) who spent long periods in Montecatini, always staying at the Locanda Maggiore where his «music room» is still preserved.

From 1852 the composer continued to come, during the summer months, to the Bagni di Montecatini for the entire time he lived in Florence (1848 to 1855). Emidio Frati, a famous chronicler who in Edenia remembers him as follows, gives direct testimony to this: “There are very few people who know news regarding the stays, in this city of waters, of an authentic musical genius like Gioachino Rossini. The Maestro, after the disappointments he had in Bologna in 1847, thought it best to go to Florence to find comfort in pleasant conversations with friends and to enjoy the attractions and tranquility that were necessary to him….”
“It was 1852 and it was from that time on that the Maestro, for several years, came
to the Bagni di Montecatini staying there for a long time at the Locanda Maggiore
together with his wife Olimpia Pelisier whom he had married as his second
nuptials…”.
“It is not known whether Rossini ‘passed the waters’ or came here to find the entertainment that his jovial character and his irony would lead one to suppose…”.
“It is certain, however, that Rossini, a great composer of music and a great eater of macaroni with tomato sauce, roast chicken and Sorana beans, never failed to visit the spa every morning, where crowds of admirers awaited him and where it was easy for him to shed some of the uncomfortable burdens due to his excessive eating. When he returned to the Locanda Maggiore, it is said that his first thought was to stop by the kitchen to see how the preparations for lunch were going. If the time required, he would take a walk in the Parco Regio to enjoy, in the summer heat, the coolness of the shade plants”.

At the Terme Tettuccio friends and admirers never left his side and, in order to participate in a conversation with the Maestro, they even accepted certain stinging lashes that Rossini was generous with, especially towards musicians. Knowing, for example, that Maestro Naldi of Pescia was a composer accustomed to appropriating other people's music and passing it off as his own, Rossini had finally agreed to correct the scores that the latter submitted to him on the condition that Naldi would send him to Florence every year, when harvest time came, a few kilograms of Sorana white beans, of which he was particularly fond.

Rossini continued to frequent the Bagni di Montecatini and the Locanda Maggiore as long as he lived in Florence but, despite the distance, even when he moved to Paris he did not forget his acquaintances such as that of Naldi who, together with the musical scores to be corrected, continued to send him the Sorana white beans.

The desire to return to the Montecatini spa could not, however, be fulfilled because the Maestro of The Barber of Seville, William Tell, The Italian of Algiers, and Cenerentola passed away in 1868.