Tancrcdi was Rossini's first serious opera, and the first opera by which his name became known throughout Europe. In this work, too, we find indicated, if not fully carried out, all those changes in the composition of the lyric drama which, without absolutely inventing them, he introduced from Germany, and especially from Mozart's operas, into Italy.

It seems strange, what was nevertheless the case, that when Rossini began to write, the mere forms of the lyric drama were, in Italy at least, far from being looked upon as settled. Opera could not at that time boast a history of more than about two centuries, and though it had made great progress during the previous hundred years and was scarcely the same entertainment as that which the most illustrious nobles in Italy had taken under their protection in the early part of the seventeenth century, it was still far from resembling the opera of the present day; so much more developed, so much more elaborated.

No general view of the progress of operatic art in Europe can well be taken; for its advance has been different in each country. But its progress in Italy was sufficiently regular from its birth, or rather its invention, towards the end of the sixteenth century up to the period of Scarlatti; and from Scarlatti in a continuous line to Rossini.