He was born in Catania on 11 February 1792' and died in Pescia on 6 December 1867.  Together with Verdi, he enjoyed probably the longest career of any 19th century Italian composer. His first opera was produced in 1813, the year of Rossini's Tancredi and L'Italiana in Algeri; his last (apart from one that was given posthumously) only seven months before his death in 1867, the year of Verdi's Don Carlos. It is only necessary to compare these titles to realise the enormous change in musical styles and taste that took place during the fifty-four years he was composing. 

If none of Pacini's contemporaries wrote for so long, it would also be true to say that none of them wrote so much. He himself claimed to have composed over 100 operas, and though modern estimates would be more conservative - since several of the works he listed were revisions, and a number of them more strictly oratorios and cantatas than operas - even the most rigorous estimate would put the total at over 70. His family is believed to have come from Tuscany: certainly it was only by accident that he was born in Catania, for his parents simply happened to be there on tour at the time of his mother's confinement. His father, Luigi, was a singer who, beginning his career as a tenor, ended it as one of the best- known buffo basses of his day. He was Rossini's first Don Geronio in Il Turco in Italia and his later roles included several in his son's early operas. They even, on one occasion, sang together: in Bologna in 1810, when Giovanni was a boy of 14, studying under the celebrated Padre Mattei, the teacher of Rossini and Donizetti. In a production of Mayr's Elisa Giovanni sang the tiny part of Germano, consisting of a single scene of recitative, while Luigi sang the more important role of Jonas. 

The family background was steeped in music, for two uncles were men of the theatre, too. They were ballet dancers, one of them a choreographer, which helps explain why, as a child, Giovanni himself began to train as a dancer - until he ran away from class and persuaded his father to let him switch to composition. Some idea of the continuing musicality of the family may be gained from the fact that in 1832 he wrote a small opera called Il convitato di pietra ('The Stone Guest'), a version of the Don Giovanni story, for performance by his relatives. His father sang the bass role of Ficcanaso, the equivalent of Leporello, and his brother Francesco the tenor part of Don Giovanni. Zerlina (soprano) was taken by his sister Claudia, and Donna Anna (contralto) by his sister-in-law Rosa. The only members of the cast who were not also members of the family were two friends, one of whom sang Ottavio while the other doubled the roles of Masetto and the Commendatore. In addition to all this, the second of Pacini's three wives, Marietta Albini, may also have been musical: providing that she was, as has been surmised, the same Marietta Albini who sang in the first performance of his opera, Il Corsaro, produced in Rome in 1831. 

As a composer, Pacini never seriously rivalled Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini and Verdi. Indeed a cynical observer might conclude that his reputation rested less on his music than upon his numbering among his mistresses Paolina Bonaparte, the sister of Napoleon, and Giulia Samoyloff, a Russian countess with, it would seem, an avid appetite for composers and tenors.    This would, however, be to do Pacini an injustice. His early operas, like those of every Italian composer of the 1820's, were written under the influence of Rossini, and, happy to be recognised as the disciple of a greater master, he was content to earn for himself the soubriquet of 'il maestro delle cabalette'. These early operas included a number which were highly successful, such as Il barone di Dolsheim (Milan, 1818), Cesare in Egitto (Rome, 1821), Alessandro  Nell'Indie (Naples, 1824), L'ultimo giorno di Pompei (Naples, 1825), Gli Arabi nelle Gallie (Milan, 1827), and Il contestabile di Chester (Naples, 1829). But eventually, realising that he was composing too much too quickly, and sensing the inadequacy of this predominantly imitative mode, he retired from the stage, and between 1835 and the beginning of 1840 devoted himself to teaching. 

It was when he returned to the theatre after this absence that he achieved his greatest successes and was most in demand throughout Italy. It was, admittedly, a time of hiatus, for Bellini had died and Donizetti had left Italy; Verdi was still only a beginner. If Fortune favoured Pacini in this, one must add that his success had also more valid justification, for this was the period in which he came closest to achieving a distinctive, personal voice of his own. Abandoning the 'operas of agility' he had previously written, he now consciously sought a musical expression which, without being any less melodic and lyrical, would be truer to the dramatic situations he was treating. As one of his contemporaries, writing late in 1843, expressed it: 

Even so, thoughtful, integrated, and moving though his music could be, it lacked the concision, the rugged energy and the urgent sense of drama to withstand the onrush, within the next few years, of the Verdi of Rigoletto, Il trovatore and La traviata. Like nearly all his contemporaries - Mercadante, Petrella, Pedrotti and many more - Pacini lived to see virtually all his operas eclipsed and driven from the stage. In later life, living in sadly reduced circumstances, he showed a pathetic gratitude whenever his most successful work, Saffo, 'la mia prediletta figlia', was performed. He would travel anywhere in Italy to give it the benefit of his presence and his supervision. At the same time, genuinely distressed by the changing style of singing he saw taking place in his day - or, as he interpreted it, the degenerating standards of singing - he inevitably resented the vigorous, often brash influence of Verdi which he, like many others, believed responsible. He had, after all, grown up in an age when the primary concerns of singers were still purity and beauty of tone. Of Nicola Ivanoff, who created the role of Riccardo Fenimoore in Maria regina d'Inghilterra, it was said that, 'working in his highest vocal cords, with that kind of singing which is called a mezzavoce, he produces effects of deeply-felt emotion in those same moments where other tenors move [their audiences] with an outburst of voice'.  As this quotation shows, Ivanoff was a member of the old school, whereas his younger contemporaries, less concerned with delicate shades of nuance, were aiming at dramatic effect through power. Verdi was regarded as the culprit responsible for this change: he was widely condemned as an abuser of voices, and not without some reason, for much of the expression and feeling he required of his characters - of Lady Macbeth, for instance - fell well outside anything earlier composers had called for. As he himself said with deliberate exaggeration when he heard that Eugenia Tadolini was to sing Lady Macbeth in Naples: 'Tadolini sings to perfection, and I don't want Lady Macbeth to sing at all. Tadolini has a wonderful voice, clear, flexible, strong, while Lady Macbeth's voice should be hard, stifled and dark. Tadolini's voice is angelic; I want Lady Macbeth's to be diabolic.' Today, when all the operas of Verdi have been revived and we are delving more and more deeply into the works of his contemporaries, we are discovering that the resentment of Pacini, Mercadante and others was not simply a case of sour grapes. Their operas occupy a middle position between the older styles and Verdi's vigour. They differ from Verdi's in the way they move: they are more elastic, they allow their lyrical passages more time to grow and expand. Verdi's operas are undeniably more taut and gripping in their onward drive, and it is right that they attracted the attention they did. But it should not be thought that their universal triumph on the stages of Italy was all gain. Inevitably something was lost that was different, besides much that was inferior. 

Pacini's most successful and individual period was the decade between 1840 and 1850, when he composed at least ten operas which would repay reconsideration today: Saffo (Naples, 1840), La fidanzata corsa (Naples, 1842), Maria regina d'Inghilterra (Palermo, 1843), Medea (Palermo, 1843), Lorenzino de’ Medici (Venice, 1845), Bondelmonte (Florence, 1845), Stella di Napoli (Naples, 1845), La regina di Cipro (Turin, 1846), Merope (Naples, 1847), and Allan Cameron (Venice, 1848). If ever his music is to return to favour, it may confidently be expected that his reputation will rest upon these works.  

In his later career he still enjoyed successes, such as Il saltimbanco (Rome, 1858), Giann' di Nisida (Rome, 1860), Don Diego de Mendoza (Venice, 1867), and the posthumous Niccolo dei Lapi (Florence, 1873). But success became ever more elusive, for these are only a few among the many operas he composed during his later years. What was responsible for his declining popularity? Was it that his powers were waning, or was it that musical taste was changing more quickly than his style of composition? Initial examination of the scores of this period suggests that there were no great changes of style, but that he was trying to 'modernise' familiar formulas through an excessive use of chromaticism. But this is only a tentative comment: it would need a major revival of his later works to determine the answers to these questions.