This essay provides a description of the widespread diffusion of self-borrowing technique in Nineteenth Century Italian Opera. This phenomenon depended on the Italian production network: a large number of new operas per year was necessary to supply the needs of all the Italian theatres, so that the composers had to work hard to satisfy such a huge request. The choice of the musical ideas to be re-used for self-borrowing was meant to avoid the audience to recognize the pre-existing music. Eventually, a particular analysis of self-borrowing technique in Rossini’s and Bellini’s operas shows the implications of this technique on Rossini’s aesthetical principles and Bellini’s compositional method.

KEYWORDS: Self-borrowings, Italian Opera, Rossini, Bellini, 19th Century.