In his irreverent old age Rossini was approached by a young composer for advice on the proper procedure for composing an operatic overture. He replied: “Wait until the evening before opening night. Nothing stimulates inspiration more than necessity, whether it be the presence of a waiting copyist, or the prodding of an impresario tearing his hair. In my time, all the impresarios were bald at thirty. I composed the overture to Otello in a little room in the Barbaja palace wherein the baldest and fiercest of directors had forcibly locked me with a lone plate of spaghetti and the threat that I would not be allowed out alive until I had written the last note. I wrote the overture to La gazza ladra the day of its opening in the theatre itself, where I was imprisoned by the director and under the surveillance of four stagehands who were instructed to throw my manuscript through the window, page by page, to the copyists waiting below. In default of pages, they were ordered to throw me out of the window. I did better for Barbiere: I did not compose an overture, but borrowed one that was meant for a semi-serious opera called Elisabette. The public was completely satisfied. I composed the overture to Le Comte Ory while fishing, with my feet in the water, and in company of Signor Agnado who talked of Spanish finance. The overture to William Tell was composed under more or less similar circumstances, and as for Mosé, I did not write one.” Probably Rossini was the wrong person to ask; Mozart would have suggested a good game of billiards. Between the ages of 14 and 37 Rossini composed no fewer than 38 operas, culminating in William Tell (properly Guillaume Tell, for the opera was written for Paris and is in French); though he was to live another 39 years, he never wrote another. He had no financial need to compose again; the appalling pressure under which he had worked for twenty years had greatly affected his health, and for the rest of his life he was virtually an invalid. Ever since the spectacular success of Meyerbeer's Robert le Diable at the Opéra in 1831 he had lost his favoured position there, while new styles of singing meant that if he wanted to continue he would have to make radical changes to his compositional technique. But in 1829 Rossini was at the height of his powers; Guillaume Tell was a huge success, and was published by Eugene Troupenas just a few months after the premiere.