Lauro Rossi was born on 19 February 1812 (some sources claim 1810) in Macerata, an historic Italian town twenty kilometres from the country’s east coast and twice that distance south of Ancona. His student years were spent in Naples, studying at the Music Conservatory with several different teachers. Two of them, Niccolò Zingarelli and Giovanni Furno, were highly regarded composers who could both claim Vincenzo Bellini as one of their earlier pupils and a third teacher, Girolamo Crescentini, was a world renowned castrato, impresario and composer. There is no doubt that Rossi was well taught.

Young Lauro’s first opera was Costanza e Oringaldo, (whose composition he shared with an older colleague, Pietro Raimondi), written for the Te...