Giovanni Paisiello

[2] His reputation now firmly established, he settled for some years at Naples, where, despite the popularity of Niccolò Piccinni, Domenico Cimarosa and Pietro Guglielmi, of whose triumphs he was bitterly jealous, he produced a series of highly successful operas, one of which, L'idolo cinese, made a deep impression upon the Neapolitan public.

In 1776, Paisiello was invited by the empress Catherine the Great of Russia to Saint Petersburg, where he remained for eight years, producing, among other charming works, his masterpiece, Il barbiere di Siviglia, which soon attained a European reputation.

The fate of this opera marks an epoch in the history of Italian art; for with it the gentle suavity cultivated by the masters of the 18th century died out to make room for the dazzling brilliance of a later period.

[2] Paisiello left Russia in 1784, and, after producing Il Re Teodoro at Vienna, entered the service of Ferdinand IV of Naples, where he composed many of his best operas, including Nina and La Molinara.

Napoleon treated him munificently, while cruelly neglecting two more famous composers, Luigi Cherubini and Étienne Méhul, to whom the new favourite transferred the hatred he had formerly borne to Cimarosa, Guglielmi and Piccinni.

[2] Paisiello conducted the music of the court in the Tuileries with a stipend of 10,000 francs and 4,800 for lodging, but he entirely failed to conciliate the Parisian public, who received his opera Proserpine so coldly that, in 1803, he requested and with some difficulty obtained permission to return to Italy, upon the plea of his wife's ill health.

On his arrival at Naples Paisiello was reinstated in his former appointments by Joseph Bonaparte and Joachim Murat, but he had taxed his genius beyond its strength and was unable to meet the demands now made upon it for new ideas.