Gioachino Rossini's William Tell... was August 3rd ...

On August 3, 1829, Gioachino Rossini's William Tell was staged at the Académie Royale de Musique in Paris. For reasons that remain mysterious to this day, but are likely linked to a condition of profound depression, Rossini withdrew from the theatrical scene with this supreme work, closing himself into a very long silence that would last thirty-nine years, namely until 1868, the year of the composer's death. A silence interrupted only by the composition of two great sacred works, the Stabat Mater and the Petite Messe Solennelle, and small chamber pieces for voice or piano, destined to go down in history under the name "Péchés de vieillesse" (Sins of Old Age). William Tell represented the challenge of the neoclassical Rossini to the then-spreading Romantic aesthetic: from this supreme score, all future musicians would draw profound inspiration, so much so that it could be fully considered a bible of European Romantic opera.