Leader, MONTAGUE BREARLEY
Conducted by HAROLD LOWE
Rossini at the age of twenty-eight was already a highly successful composer of operas ; he had been at it for nearly ten years and had already to his credit between twenty and thirty operas. Some of his operas, however, were failures ; one in particular entitled Mahomet II had no success. Rossini, however, was not a man to waste anything unless he could help it, so when, six years later, he wanted an overture for his opera, The' Siege of Corinth, he borrowed it from Mahomet. Both operas are now no more, but the overture, a perfectly good One, keeps their memory alive.