Mauro Giuliani’s Rossiniane, published between 1821 and 1828, are a series of six musical potpourris entirely based on the music of Gioachino Rossini. The potpourri was one of the most popular instrumental genres of the early 1800s, an assembly of musical themes with different origins combined into a single composition. In the absence of the modern means of reproducing music, they had a very important function: of bringing music, most often created for the theatre, into the home.

Some import...