It is a fact still largely unknown that the Italian composer Gioachino Rossini, famous almost entirely for his operas, also left a large body of sacred, vocal, piano, and chamber music. After he had written almost forty operas in little more than twenty years, and had become the foremost innovator in the field of dramatic music, Rossini retired from the opera stage in 1829 when he was at the pinnacle of his career. This was not a result of any lack of creativity or musical ideas, or of a deliberate decision, but was caused mainly by neurasthenic ill health resulting from the enormous exertions of his life until then. Early in 1855, following long years of illness, he settled in Paris, where he was to remain for the rest of his life. There he gave musical soirees, as a leading figure in Parisian society, and in this milieu from 1857 onward he also returned to composition. During the last decade of his life he wrote hundreds of notable pieces which he did not, however, release for publication in his lifetime, only occasionally performing them himself, or allowing them to be performed, in his salon. Rossini described the compositions of those years – not without self-mockery – as “Peches de vieillesse” (sins of old age). The present recording gives some examples from among his many compositions for choir and vocal ensembles.