Olympe Pélissier

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Olympe Pélissier (?-1878) was an artist's model and the second wife of the composer Gioachino Rossini. The couple married on on August 16, 1846.

Under the Bourbon Restoration, Pélissier had been a notable figure in Parisian society, admired by the Comte de Girardin, holding salons attended by Baron Schikler, and in 1830 having a liaison with Honore Balzac^[1][2]. She and Rossini first met in 1840, in the aftermath of his separation from his first wife Isabella Colbran, and Olympe began to cook for him and manage his business affairs, though they only married after Isabella's death. She lived with him at his new house in the Passy suburb, and continued to do so until her own death.

In fiction, she appears in the 1974 French tv film Eugène Sue[1], played by Claudine Coster.

[edit] References

1. ^ De La Littérature : Biographie de Honoré de Balzac
2. ^ Balzac : Monde et demi monde dans La Comédie humaine - Le blog de Med Médiène

[edit] External links

• Rossini and his widow; Death of the latter, how she came to marry the great composer, New York Times, April 28, 1878