It is still a mystery why Rossini – who had the whole world at his feet, and what is even more important, even the delicate Parisian audience was eating out of his hands, whose operas were paid by clients sums unimaginable until then, on whom Stendhal published an extensive biography on a fanatic tone at his age of thirty-two – quitted composing operas (as it turned out, for ever) and withdrew from his career of composer.

Listening to his last considerable composition composed in this period, Stabat Mater, recalls the affair of Frigyes Karinthy. Is it possible that he surfeited from the condemnation of the composer of comic operas? His solemn compositions succeeded less than his comic operas, while the elegance and expression of the musical material, the way one may feel in this composition, catches up with the best compositions of “solemn” composers with a much higher reputation.

Of course, it might have been unavoidable that the overwrought pace in which Rossini lived and composed and had success after success in his first thirty years, lead to years of depression and introspection. Our luck is that these spiritual struggles finally took a musical shape, and thus one of our composer’s most beautiful and primal compositions, Stabat Mater was conceived.