Rossini was born in Pesaro in 1792, five months after his parents' were married. His father, a brass player, and, later, a horn teacher at the Academy in Bologne, had a modestly successful career that was frequently disturbed by the political changes of the period, as the French replaced the Austrians in Northern Italy. Rossini's mother was a singer. As a boy, Gioachino played with his father in the orchestra pit, and, from time to time, appeared as a singer with his mother. Later, he worked as keyboard player in the opera orchestra. Rossini's early music studies were primarily with his parents, and, through the generosity of rich patrons, with a few, select other teachers.

From his first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio, in 1810, to William Tell, his final work for the stage, which was written for Paris in 1829, Rossini enjoyed a short and extremely successful career as a composer. Other operas had been commissioned in Paris, but the fall of the Bourbon King Charles X in 1830 concluded these plans. In 1836, he returned to Italy and, in spite of ill health, was very much involved in the affairs of the Liceo Musicale in Bologne. In 1853, having already retired from operatic composition after William Tell, he returned to Paris, where he enjoyed a reputation as an arbiter of musical taste, a wit, and a gourmet. Rossini devoted the last forty years of his life to piano music and sacred choral works, and to the enjoyment of the continued popularity of his works. By the 1850s, he had already taken his place atop the pantheon of Italian opera composers.

Of Rossini's three dozen plus operas, Il Barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) is probably the best known. The work is a treatment of the first play of the Figaro trilogy by Beaumarchais from which Mozart had drawn thirty years earlier. Other well known comic operas by Rossini include La Scala di Seta (The Silken Ladder), Il Signor Bruschino, L'Italiana in Algeri (The Italian Girl in Algiers), Il Turco in Italia (The Turk in Italy), La Cenerentola (Cinderella), and La Gazza ladra (The Thieving Magpie). More serious subjects were tackled in Otello, Semiramide, Mose in Egitto (Moses in Egypt), and the Guillaume Tell (William Tell), based on the play by Schiller. The Overtures to many of these operas are a recurrent element in the concert halls all over the world.