Composer Gioachino Rossini Gets Leap Year Google Doodle Treatment

Google is celebrating Leap Day with a homepage doodle in honor of Gioachino Rossini, an Italian composer born today in 1792.

The doodle is inspired by one of Rossini's more famous operas, The Barber of Seville. For those familiar with it, IBN noted that the barber frog is Figaro while his customer is Count Almaviva.

Rossini was not the first person to take on The Barber of Seville, though, which was based on a play by Pierre Beaumarchais. Giovanni Paisiello had already crafted a successful version of the opera, and fans were miffed when they heard that Rossini was doing his own version. They even "choreographed a disturbance at the premiere," NPR said, but Rossini's version quickly became the more popular opera.


Rossini came from a musical family; his father was a trumpeteer and his mother a singer. The composer tried his hand at singing, but was forced to give it up after his voice broke, according to his Encyclopedia Britannica biography. He turned to opera, and specifically, the opera buffa, or comic opera. His first opera buffa debuted in 1810 and over the next decade, he gained fame and fortune throughout Europe. He eventually retired to Paris, where he "gave superb gourmet dinners attended by many of the greats of the musical and literary world of the mid-19th century."

He died in November 1868 near Paris.


Rossini's birthday, meanwhile, is celebrated on Feb. 29, also known as Leap Day. As About.com explained, Leap years have 366 days because calendar years are actually 365.242 days long, not 365. "Basically, leap years occur every 4 years, and years that are evenly divisible by 4 (2004, for example) have 366 days," the site said.
In conjunction with today's doodle, the Google doodle team produced a video (below) that provides some insight into their creative process. Ideas for doodles come from the team itself, as well as other Googlers and average users, for example. The video also highlights the Doodle 4 Google contest, which calls on students to create a doodle and compete for a chance to have it highlighted on Google.com. This year's contest kicked off last month.
For more on Google's doodles, meanwhile, see the slideshow above. One of the company's more popular doodles last year was a playable image in honor of musician Les Paul, which eventually got its own standalone site. The company has also honored Gumby creator Art Clokey, Muppets creator Jim Henson, Queen frontman Freddie Mercury, and Intel co-founder Robert Noyce