Swans sing until the end of their lives.
But Rossini stopped singing in the middle of his.
—Heinrich Heine

During the last decade of his life, Gioachino Rossini, the “Swan of Pesaro” and composer of some of the most popular operas of the nineteenth century, held regular Saturday evening receptions at his Paris apartment at 2 Chaussée d’Antin or, during the summer, at Beau Séjour, his house in Passy, then in the countryside outside the city.

Although this sort of salon was fairly typical (the well-connected could easily attend different salons almost every night of the week), within a few months of the Rossinis’ first samedi soir in December 1858, an invitation was the city’s highest social prize. Musicians, danseuses, critics, and authors mixed with the great bankers and politicians of the Second Empire and purple-clad members of the Holy See, all cramming into the reception rooms hoping to hear a snatch of the great man’s causeries charmantes. Admission was by ticket only, surrendered at the door to the formidable Madame Rossini who was described (anonymously, of course) in the Moniteur as la femme à trois têtes.

Rossini would often serve Italian delicacies, then rare in Paris, to favored guests beforehand, but the real focus of the samedis was neither conversation nor cuisine, but music— particularly the music written after Rossini’s return to Paris in 1855. Many of these songs and piano pieces that he called his Péchés de Vieillesse(Sins