At the age of thirty-seven, after achieving world acclaim as a great opera composer, Rossini rather suddenly ceased all creative operatic work. This block persisted for the remainder of his life. In a well-written essay the author speculates that this puzzling renunciation could be explained as a result of Rossini's mother's death two years previously, a mother for whom he had markedly ambivalent feelings. Rossini's Oedipal and preoedipal conflicts had been expressed in sublimated form in his operas, exemplified in The Barber of Seville and William Tell. For two years after his mother's death Rossini displayed little overt mourning reaction. Marked oral and anal regression then occurred. His cessation of work was accompanied by marked neurotic and, at times, psychotic regressing. This paper illustrates anew how significant unconscious conflict may be in the inspiration of creativity as well as in its inhibition.