Through 1829 Rossini was an extraordinarily prolific composer of operas, comic, serious, and semiserious, in Italian and French, as well as of a great deal of vocal and instrumental music.

He composed sacred music, vocal treatises, cantatas. Then, for many different reasons, he wrote very little music for more than twentyfive years, if we except some songs and the ' Stabat Mater'. Only after he left Italy definitively for Paris in 1855 did he find his voice again.

Between 1857 and 1868 a fresh group of masterpieces issued from his pen, the so-called ' Péchés de vieillesse ' (Sins of Old Age), including chamber music, songs, and the 'Petite Messe Solennelle'.

Philip Gossett, General Editor of Works of Gioachino Rossini, is the Robert W. Reneker Distinguished Service Professor at The University of Chicago and a professor " di chiara fama " at the University of Rome "La Sapienza ". He is also general editor of The Works of Giuseppe Verdi.

Bärenreiter in cooperation with the Center for Italian Opera Studies at The University of Chicago will publish ten volumes in the series Works of Gioachino Rossini, in critical editions, during the period 2007–2011. These are all volumes that were not issued in the " Edizione critica delle opere di Gioachino Rossini".