Eugène Scribe

Scribe's grave at the Père-Lachaise Cemetery,(Paris)

Augustin Eugène Scribe (pronounced [ɔɡystin‿øʒɛn skʁib]; 24 December 1791 – 20 February 1861) was a French dramatist and librettist. He is known for the perfection of the so-called "well-made play" (pièce bien faite), a mainstay of popular theatre for over 100 years, and as the librettist of many of the most successful grand operas.

Biography[link]

Scribe was born in Paris and died there. His father was a silk merchant, and he was well educated, being destined for the law. However, he soon began to write for the stage. His first piece, Le Prétendu sans le savoir, was produced anonymously at the Variétés in 1810, and was a failure. Numerous other plays, written in collaboration with various authors, followed; but Scribe achieved no distinct success till 1815, when he wrote Une Nuit de la garde nationale (Night of the National Guard, 1815), a collaboration with Delestre Poirson. Much of his later work was also written in collaboration with others. His debut in serious comedy was made at the Théâtre Français in 1822 with Valérie. Among the actors he wrote starring roles for are Mlle Mars and Rachel. Scribe was elected to the Académie française in 1834.

Scribe's main subject matter was the contemporary bourgeoisie. He mastered his craft writing comédies vaudevilles, short middle-class entertainments, often with songs. Eventually he developed the formulaic "well-made play"; popular pieces with elaborate plots featuring clever twists and turns, and usually centering on a misunderstanding (quiproquo) which is revealed early on to the audience but not realised by the protagonists until the final scenes. Characters face a series of obstacles, the resolution of which may create in turn further problems. At the end a scène a faire, with startling revelations, leads to a sensational denouement.^[1][2] Whilst their ingenuity was recognised by contemporary and later critics, the plays lack fine language, depth of character, thought, or social analysis. They thus stand in sharp contrast, for example, to Romantic plays of the same period, such as those of Victor Hugo. Théophile Gautier questioned how it could be that, "an author without poetry, lyricism, style, philosophy, truth or naturalism could be the most successful writer of his epoch, despite the opposition of literature and the critics?"^[3]

Scribe was prolific; he wrote various dramas — vaudevilles, comedies, tragedies and opera libretti. To the Gymnase theatre alone he is said to have furnished a hundred and fifty pieces before 1830. He had a number of co-workers, (Scribe's 'factory'), one of whom supplied the story, another the dialogue, a third the jokes and so on. He is said in some cases to have sent sums of money for "copyright in ideas" to men who were unaware that he had taken suggestions from their work. Among his collaborators were Jean Henri Dupin (1787–1887), Germain Delavigne, Delestre-Poirson, Mélésville, Marc-Antoine Madeleine Désaugiers, Xavier Saintine and Ernest Legouvé.

The mechanical aspect of Scribe's constructions made his works suitable for operatic adaptation, allowing for "effective contrasting of musical treatment, whilst the confrontations provided excellent opportunities for ensembles."^[4]

Scribe wrote libretti for operas for many major composers of his time, often for productions destined for the Paris Opéra. Many of these libretti constitute the basis of the Grand Opera genre and changed the whole course of French lyric drama.^[5]

He collaborated with Giacomo Meyerbeer on a number of occasions, and also provided the words for works by Giuseppe Verdi, Vincenzo Bellini, Daniel Auber (La muette de Portici, Gustave III and others), Fromental Halévy (including La Juive, Guido et Ginevra, and Le Juif errant), François-Adrien Boieldieu, Gaetano Donizetti and Gioachino Rossini (Le comte Ory). At the time of his death, he was working on revision of the libretto for Meyerbeer's L'Africaine, which he had originally written in 1838.^[4]

Of his 'historical' operas it has been written:

They exist in a parallel universe, in which colourful historical or geographical milieux display a handful of stereotypes who, as a consequence of some secret manoeuvrings in their own pasts and coincidences in the present, are forced to face some implausible crisis of choice or conscience, preferably accompanied by a simultaneous natural disaster or violent death (or both).^[6]

Scribe wrote a few novels, but none of any mark. His Œuvres complétes appeared in seventy-six volumes between 1874 and 1885.

He has been assumed to be the father of the politician Georges Coulon.^[7]

Works[link]

See also Category: Libretti by Eugène Scribe and Category:Plays by Eugène Scribe

Notable plays[link]

• 1826: Bertrand et Suzette; ou Le Mariage de raison
• 1833: Bertrand et Raton, on l'art de conspirer (The School for Politicians)
• 1842: Une Chaine
• 1842: Le Verre d'eau (The Glass of Water)
• 1849: Adrienne Lecouvreur, in conjunction with Legouvé
• 1851: Bataille de Dames (The Ladies' Battle)

Plays adapted into opera libretti[link]

• 1831: Le philtre, adapted by Felice Romani into the libretto for Donizetti'sL'elisir d'amore.
• 1831: A ballet-pantomime became the basis of the Italian libretto for Bellini's La sonnambula,
• 1902: Adriana Lecouvreur (written in collaboration with Ernest Legouvé) was adapted into a libretto by Arturo Colautti for Francesco Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur

Principal libretti[link]

• 1825: Boieldieu's La dame blanche (based on five works by Walter Scott).
• 1828: Revisions to a libretto by Germain Delavigne for Daniel Auber's La muette de Portici (The Mute Girl of Portici)
• 1830: Auber's Fra Diavolo
• 1831: Meyerbeer's Robert le diable (with Germain Delavigne)
• 1831: La marquise de Brinvilliers set by nine composers (with Castil-Blaze)
• 1831: Meyerbeer's Les Huguenots (with Émile Deschamps)
• 1833: Auber's Gustave III, ou Le bal masqué (Gustavus III, or The Masked Ball)
• 1835: Halévy's La Juive
• 1843: Donizetti's Dom Sébastien (based on Paul-Henri Foucher's play)
• 1855: Verdi's Les vêpres siciliennes (I vespri siciliani) (with Charles Duveyrier, based on their work on Le duc d'Albe for Donizetti's unfinished opera, which was not performed until 1882).

References[link]

Notes

Cited sources

• Conway, David, Jewry in Music: Entry to the Profession from the Enlightenment to Richard Wagner. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. ISBN 9781107015388
• Crosten, William Loran, French Grand Opera: An Art and a Business, New York: King's Crown Press, 1948.
• Smith, C. N., 'Scribe, (Augustin) Eugène', in S. Sadie (ed.) The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (20 vols), London: Macmillan, 1983

Other sources

• Charlton, David (ed), The Cambridge Companion to Grand Opera, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003. ISBN 9780521646833.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Eugène Scribe

• Works by Eugène Scribe at Project Gutenberg
• Scribe's works: text, concordances and frequency list

Rosa Ponselle (January 22, 1897 – May 25, 1981), was an American operatic soprano with a large, opulent voice. She sang mainly at the New York Metropolitan Opera and is generally considered by music critics to have been one of the greatest sopranos of the past 100 years.

Early life[link]

She was born Rosa Ponzillo on January 22, 1897, in Meriden, Connecticut, the youngest of three children. The family lived on the city's west side in a neighborhood chiefly populated by immigrants from the south of Italy, first at the corner of Lewis Avenue and Bartlett Street, then on Foster Street, where Ponselle was born, moving when she was three to Springdale Avenue. Her parents were Italian Neapolitan immigrants. Rosa had an exceptionally mature voice at an early age and, at least in her early years, sang on natural endowment with little, if any, vocal training. Instead, her early prowess as a piano student (which was cultivated by a local music teacher, Anna Ryan, the organist of a nearby Catholic church), seemed to incline Rosa to instrumental rather than vocal music. But with the influence and example of her older sister, Carmela, who was then pursuing a career as a cabaret singer, Rosa began to augment her engagements as a silent-movie accompanist in and around Meriden by singing popular ballads to her audiences while the projectionist changed film reels. By 1914, her reputation as a singer led to a long-term engagement at the San Carlino theater, one of the largest movie houses in New Haven, near the Yale campus.

Vaudeville[link]

Rosa Ponzillo (1918)

By then, Carmela was already an established singer in vaudeville after her debut in The Girl from Brighton, a 1912 Broadway musical. Three years later, in 1915, Carmela brought Rosa to audition for her vaudeville agent. In spite of being markedly overweight (a stark contrast to the fashion-model physique of her older sister), Rosa impressed with her voice, and she was hired to perform with Carmela as a "sister act". Between 1915 and 1918, the Ponzillo Sisters (also known as "Those Tailored Italian Girls") became a headlining act on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit, appearing in all the major Keith theaters and earning a substantial income in the process. The sisters' act consisted of traditional ballads, popular Italian songs, and operatic arias and duets.

In 1918, Carmela and Rosa demanded a substantial fee increase from the Keith Vaudeville Circuit, as a result of which their act was dropped. At the time, Carmela was studying in New York with a well-connected voice teacher/agent named William Thorner. Thorner auditioned Rosa, and agreed to give her lessons. (Rosa later denied that Thorner had ever given her voice lessons, but her statements on the subject are contradictory.) Although initially less impressed with Rosa's future prospects than with Carmela's, Thorner changed his opinion after the legendary baritone Victor Maurel, whom Giuseppe Verdi had chosen to create Iago in Otello, auditioned both sisters at his friend Thorner's request. Soon afterward, Thorner persuaded the great tenor Enrico Caruso, star of the Metropolitan Opera, to his studio to hear Carmela and Rosa sing. Caruso was deeply impressed with Rosa's voice and arranged for an audition with the Met, as a result of which the Met's general manager, Giulio Gatti-Casazza, offered Rosa a contract for the 1918-19 season.

Metropolitan Opera debut and early operatic career[link]

Ponselle at the Met as Leonora falling back into the arms of Caruso as Don Alvaro in La forza del destino.

Rosa Ponselle made her Metropolitan Opera debut on November 15, 1918, just a few days after the Great War had finished, as Leonora in Verdi's La forza del destino, opposite Caruso. It was her first performance on any opera stage. She was quite intimidated for being in the presence of Caruso, and in spite of an almost paralyzing case of nerves (which she suffered from throughout her operatic career), she scored a tremendous success, both with the public and with the critics. New York Times critic James Huneker wrote:

What a promising debut! Added to her personal attraciveness, she possesses a voice of natural beauty that may prove a gold mine. It is vocal gold, anyhow, with its luscious lower and middle tones, dark, rich and ductile, brilliant in the upper register.

In addition to Leonora, Ponselle's roles in the 1918-19 season included Santuzza in Cavalleria rusticana, Rezia in Weber's Oberon, and Carmelita in the (unsuccessful) world premiere of Joseph Carl Breil's The Legend (a role and opera that Ponselle loathed so much that she later burned the score and said the opera "would stink up a cat box").^{[citation needed]}

In the following Met seasons, Ponselle's roles included the lead soprano roles in La Juive (opposite Caruso's Eléazar, his last new role before he died), William Tell, Ernani, Il trovatore, Aida, La Gioconda, Don Carlos, L'Africaine, L'amore dei tre re, Andrea Chénier, La vestale, and in 1927 the role that many considered her greatest achievement, the title role in Bellini's Norma. In addition to her operatic activities, which were centered at the Met, Ponselle had a lucrative concert career. A tour of the West coast included an appearance at the Lobero Theatre in Santa Barbara on March 14, 1927 in the Artist Series of the Community Arts Association's Music Branch, accompanied by pianist Stuart Ross.

Appearances abroad and later operatic career[link]

Outside the USA, Ponselle sang only at Covent Garden in London (for three seasons) and in Italy (in order, so she said, to honor a promise she had made to her mother that she would one day sing in Italy). In 1929, Ponselle made her European debut in London, at the Royal Opera House at Covent Garden. Up until that time, her career had been concentrated entirely in America. Ponselle sang two roles at Covent Garden in 1929: Norma and Gioconda. She had great success and was tumultuously acclaimed by the normally staid London audiences. She returned to London in 1930 in Norma, L'amore dei tre re, and La traviata (her first performances as Violetta). In her final London season in 1931, she sang in La forza del destino, Fedra (an opera by her coach and long-time friend, Romano Romani), and a reprise of La traviata.

In 1933 Ponselle sang her only performances in Italy, as Giulia in La vestale, with the Maggio Musicale in Florence. As in London, the audiences were wildly enthusiastic. At the second performance, Ponselle had to encore the aria, "O nume tutelar". Her success was such that she considered an engagement at Milan's La Scala, but after witnessing a Florence audience's brutal treatment of a famous tenor, Giacomo Lauri-Volpi, who cracked on a high note, she decided not to press her luck further with the notoriously difficult Italian operagoing public. Other than her appearances in London and Florence, Ponselle never sang outside the United States.

Ponselle continued in the 1930s to add roles to her repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera. In 1930 she sang Donna Anna in Don Giovanni to great acclaim, but her first New York appearances in 1931 as Violetta, a role she had sung with such success in London, received a more mixed reception from the New York critics, some of whom found her interpretation too forceful and dramatic. (W.J. Henderson complained of her "assaults" on the vocal line.) In 1931 she sang in another unsuccessful world premiere, Montemezzi's La notte di Zoraima, which sank without a trace. Like many other opera singers of that time, she made a brief trip to Hollywood and made screen tests for M-G-M and Paramount, but nothing came of them.

In 1935, Ponselle sang her first Carmen at the Met. In spite of a great popular success with the role, for which she had prepared meticulously, Ponselle received a drubbing from most of the New York critics, especially Olin Downes in the New York Times, whose savagely caustic review hurt Ponselle deeply. The only roles Ponselle sang during her last two seasons at the Met were Santuzza and Carmen, roles that did not tax her upper register. Differences with the Met management regarding repertoire led her not to renew her contract with the company for the 1937-38 season. Her last operatic performance was as Carmen on April 22, 1937, in a Met tour performance in Cleveland.

Retirement[link]

Ponselle did not consciously or purposely retire after that Cleveland Carmen in 1937; she just let her career slip away. A variety of factors contributed to this: her receding upper register, which made singing her signature roles increasingly nerve-wracking; her bitterness over the Met management's refusal to accede to her requests regarding repertoire (she wanted to sing Cilea's Adriana Lecouvreur, another part with a congenial low tessitura, and general manager Edward Johnson said no); mental and physical exhaustion, after a non-stop, intense 21-year career with continual bouts of performance nerves; her marriage in 1936 to Baltimore socialite Carle Jackson; and her enjoyment of the relaxed life she now had without the demands of performing. Ponselle later said that she never missed performing after she retired. She and Jackson built a luxurious home near Baltimore, Maryland, the Villa Pace, where she lived the rest of her life.

Her marriage to Jackson was rocky and they divorced in 1949. The breakup was traumatic for Ponselle, and she suffered a nervous breakdown. Although she never again appeared on the concert or opera stage, Ponselle continued to sing at home for friends, who reported that her voice was as magnificent as ever. This was confirmed in 1954, when RCA Victor came to Villa Pace and recorded Ponselle singing a wide variety of songs. In the late 1940s, Ponselle became the guiding force of the fledgling Baltimore Civic Opera Company, providing coaching and voice lessons for the young singers who appeared with the company. Among those who coached with her during their Baltimore Civic Opera appearances at the start of their careers were Beverly Sills, Sherrill Milnes, Plácido Domingo and James Morris.

Death[link]

Ponselle died at her estate, Villa Pace, near Baltimore, Maryland on May 25, 1981, aged 84, after a long battle with bone marrow cancer. She is buried in nearby Druid Ridge Cemetery.

Quotations[link]

• "When discussing singers, there are two you must first set aside: Rosa Ponselle and Enrico Caruso. Then you may begin." - Geraldine Farrar, soprano.
• "In my lifetime, there have been three vocal miracles: Caruso, Ruffo and Ponselle. Apart from these there have been several wonderful singers." - Tullio Serafin, conductor.
• "When you hear the voice of Rosa Ponselle, you hear a fountain of melody blessed by the Lord." - Mary Garden, soprano.
• "The most glorious voice that ever came from any woman's throat." - Walter Legge, record producer.
• "The greatest singer of us all." - Maria Callas, soprano.
• "The Queen of Queens in all of singing." - Luciano Pavarotti, tenor.

The voice[link]

Rosa Ponselle's voice was one of extraordinary beauty and voluptuousness. In its richness and depth, it has been compared by commentators at various times to port wine, maroon velvet and dark chocolate. Luciano Pavarotti, who visited Villa Pace and vocalized with Ponselle when she was nearly 80 years old, likened her still-intact voice to "the color of amber." The voice was absolutely even in its scale, from top to bottom, with all vocal registers seamlessly integrated and no audible changes of gear. Her legato singing was exemplary. She could sing at all dynamic levels, from a powerful forte to a gossamer pianissimo that carried to all corners of the opera house, and she could execute a perfect messa di voce in all parts of her range. In her early years, she had a three-octave range from low C to high C. She possessed an exceptionally rich and mellow middle and lower register.^{[citation needed]}

In weight and caliber Ponselle's voice was a true dramatic coloratura soprano, capable of encompassing all the demands of roles like La Gioconda and Norma. Although not a coloratura soprano in the mould of Tetrazzini or Galli-Curci, she had unusual flexibility for such a large and powerful voice and could negotiate fast scale passages with ease and accuracy, the proverbial "string of pearls". She possessed a fine trill that she could sustain seemingly forever: when she sang the trill in the cabaletta "Tutto sprezzo" in Act I of Verdi's Ernani, the story was that the conductor would simply fold his arms and wait for her to finish, picking up his baton only when she indicated that she was ready to come out of the trill.

The principal flaw in Ponselle's voice, past the earliest years of her operatic career, was a problematic top register. Even in her earliest days, she had a phobia of the high C. In an interview in 1955, Ponselle said that the first thing she did when looking over a prospective role was flip through the score and count the high Cs. (The exposed high C in "O patria mia" in Aida terrified Ponselle and was the reason she did not sing more often a role that otherwise fitted her, vocally, like a glove.) Throughout her career Ponselle availed herself freely of transpositions. Apparently, she never sang any of the high Cs in Norma but transposed them all down to a B. Her "Sempre libera" in the live recording of La traviata is taken down a whole tone.^{[citation needed]}

In the later years of her career, but while she was still relatively young, her top register receded, and she was increasingly drawn to roles like Santuzza, Carmen and Adriana that did not tax her upper register. Some have speculated that Ponselle was by nature a mezzo-soprano. This theory is bolstered by the dark richness and solidity of her lower register. Ponselle herself once told mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne that she might have studied as a mezzo had she not begun singing so young. More likely, however, Ponselle, like Horne and Regina Resnik, started out as a true soprano, but as her voice matured it darkened and settled into a lower placement. Had Ponselle continued to sing into the 1940s, she would probably have done so as a mezzo-soprano.^{[citation needed]}

The following recordings best demonstrate the various aspects of Ponselle's voice discussed above:

• Range, timbre, pianissimo: "Suicidio!"
• Trill and coloratura: "Ernani, involami" and "Mercè, diletti amiche" ("Bolero")
• Legato: "Tu che invoco" and "O nume tutelar"
• Dynamic control and messa di voce: "Pace, pace, mio Dio"

Recordings[link]

Ponselle as Princess Mathilde in Rossini's William Tell at the Met in 1923.

Martin Bernheimer, writing in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, had this to say about Ponselle's voice and recordings:

Ponselle's voice is generally regarded as one of the most beautiful of the century. She was universally lauded for opulence of tone, evenness of scale, breadth of range, perfection of technique and communicative warmth. Many of these attributes are convincingly documented on recordings. In 1954 she made a few private song recordings, later released commercially, revealing a still opulent voice of darkened timbre and more limited range.^[1]

Rosa Ponselle's recording career began with the acoustic horn, continued with electric recording, and ended on magnetic tape. Over her career, she made 166 commercial recordings (not including alternate takes), either in the studio or at Villa Pace. These are supplemented by live recordings from the 1930s, which include three complete operas and numerous songs and arias from her appearances on radio. Additionally, there are numerous "private" recordings made by Ponselle herself and others at the Villa Pace, from 1949 through the late 1970s. The Italian critics however found and find her voice "una voce fissata" lacking vibrancy and life with an almost supernatural dullness in interpretation.

Columbia Recordings. Shortly before her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1918, Ponselle signed a 5-year contract with the Columbia Graphophone Company. Although at that time Victor was the more prestigious label, and the one for which Caruso recorded, Ponselle was advised by William Thorner and his assistant and accompanist, Romano Romani, to sign a contract with Columbia because she would become the company's leading soprano and not just one in a stable of great singers. Romani, a young composer whose opera Fedra had earned favorable attention in Italy, was conducting recording sessions for Columbia at the time. Under his baton, Ponselle made 44 discs for Columbia, including arias from many operas in which she never sang, such as Lohengrin, Tosca, La bohème, Madama Butterfly, and I vespri siciliani. All her Columbia discs were acoustical recordings. Her 1923 Columbia recording of "Selva opaca" from William Tell was her personal favorite among all her acoustic recordings, because she felt that it was the most accurate representation of her voice and style at the time. Of particular interest among the Columbia discs are three duets she made with Carmela of some of their vaudeville hits, including a version of "Comin' Thro' the Rye" that features an elaborate coloratura cadenza that would not be out of place in Bellini's Norma but sounds a bit strange in the Scottish Highlands. One of Ponselle's regrets about signing with Columbia was that it deprived her of the opportunity to record with Caruso, who was an exclusive Victor artist.

Victor Recordings. When her Columbia contract expired in 1923, Ponselle immediately signed with Victor. Her recordings from 1923 until mid-1925 are all acoustics; from 1925 on, they are electrical recordings. Among the latter, Ponselle's most admired Victor recordings include "Pace, pace mio Dio", "Suicidio!", "Casta Diva", and the two arias from La vestale. She also recorded several ensembles, including the complete Tomb Scene from Aida with Giovanni Martinelli, "Mira, o Norma" with Marion Telva, the Adalgisa of her first Normas in 1927, and a trio from La forza del destino with Martinelli and Ezio Pinza. Ponselle made no studio recordings after 1939. In 1954 RCA Victor, unable to persuade Ponselle to return to the recording studio, took its recording equipment to the Villa Pace and set up a microphone in the foyer. Ponselle, with piano accompaniment by conductor Igor Chichagov, recorded alternate versions of 53 songs, many of which were released on two LP discs, Rosa Ponselle Sings Today and Rosa Ponselle in Song. They show that Ponselle's voice was in magnificent condition even at age 57, with extraordinary richness and depth (including a low D in Der Tod und das Mädchen).

Live Recordings. Ponselle sang often on the radio in the early 30s, and she generally had her broadcasts recorded on 78 rpm acetate disks. Many of these have been released since on LP and CD. There are five complete opera performances from the Metropolitan Opera radio broadcasts: Don Giovanni (1934), La traviata (1935), and three performances of Carmen (03.28.1936 Boston, 01.09.1937 New York and 04.17.1937 Cleveland). The April 1937 Carmen is the Cleveland tour performance that was Ponselle's farewell to the operatic stage. The Traviata and Carmen performances are in good sound (for a mid-30s radio broadcast transcription); the Don Giovanni is in very poor sound. Ponselle's live recordings also include many songs and arias from her radio concerts. Finally, there are private recordings made at the Villa Pace of Ponselle singing various songs and arias accompanying herself on the piano, some of which are items she never recorded elsewhere. There is a particularly moving and very freely-rendered performance of the aria "Senza Mamma" from Suor Angelica.

For an example of Rosa Ponselle's voice as she sings "A Perfect Day" by Carrie Jacobs-Bond, click here.

Compact discs[link]

• Rosa Ponselle RCA Victor Vocal Series.
• Rosa Ponselle: The Columbia Acoustic Recordings; Pearl.
• Rosa Ponselle: The Victor Recordings 1923-25; Romophone.
• Rosa Ponselle: The Victor Recordings 1925-29; Romophone.
• Rosa Ponselle: The 1939 Victor and 1954 "Villa Pace" Recordings; Romophone.
• Rosa Ponselle in Opera and Song; Nimbus Prima Voce (available separately on 3 *CDs - Rosa Ponselle vv. 1, 2 & 3; Nimbus).
• Rosa Ponselle On the Air Volume 1 1934-36; Marston.
• Rosa Ponselle On the Air Volume 2; Marston.
• Rosa Ponselle: When I Have Sung My Songs 1922-1957; Biographies in Music, Cantabile.

Notes[link]

References[link]

• American Association of University Women, (Towson, Maryland, Branch), "Baltimore County Women, 1930-1975", (Baltimore: The Sunpapers, 1976) [The book is a collection of profiles of forty Baltimore County women "who distinguished themselves" in diverse fields (including artist Jane Frank and golfer Carol Mann), compiled as part of a project celebrating the 1976 United States Bicentennial ] OCLC 7441013
• Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Centenary Biography (Amadeus Press: Portland 1997) ISBN 0-385-15641-3
• Fitzgerald, Gerald ed., Annals of the Metropolitan Opera (G. K. Hall & Co.: Boston 1989) ISBN 0-8161-8903-X
• Jackson, Paul, "Saturday Afternoons at the Old Met: The Metropolitan Opera Matinee Broadcasts, 1931-1950" (Amadeus Press: Portland 1992)
• Phillips-Matz, Mary Jane, Rosa Ponselle: American Diva (Northeastern University Press: Boston 1997) ISBN 1-55553-317-5
• Ponselle, Rosa & Drake, James A., Rosa Ponselle: A Singer's Life (Doubleday & Sons: New York 1982) ISBN 0-385-15641-3
• Scott, Michael, "The Record of Singing, Vol. 2" (Gerald Duckworth & Co., Ltd.: London 1979)
• Steane, J.B., The Grand Tradition (Amadeus Press: Portland, 1993) ISBN 0-684-13634-1

Michele Pezza
Born	(1771-04-07)April 7, 1771 Itri, Kingdom of Naples
Died	November 11, 1806(1806-11-11) (aged 35) Naples, Kingdom of Naples
Other names	Fra Diavolo
Organization	Sanfedismo

Fra Diavolo (lit. Brother Devil; April 7, 1771–November 11, 1806), is the popular name given to Michele Pezza, a famous Neapolitan guerrilla leader who resisted the French occupation of Naples, proving an “inspirational practicioner of popular insurrection”.^[1] Pezza figures prominently in folk lore and fiction. He appears in several works of Alexandre Dumas, including The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-hermine in the Age of Napoleon, not published until 2007^[2] and in Washington Irving's short story "The Inn at Terracina".^[3]

Biography[link]

The nickname "Fra Diavolo" came about due to an old Itrano custom: Until early in the twentieth century Itrani boys and girls who had recently recovered from serious illnesses were dressed as monks on the second Sunday after Easter, for a procession in honor of St. Francis of Paola, the patron of sick children. On one of these solemn occasions little Michele, who was apparently a handful to begin with, proved so naughty that someone called him “Fra Diavolo” which stuck.^[4]

Early life[link]

The notion that Pezza "was born of low parentage" has received wide circulation but is hardly accurate; it forms part of a hostile tradition derived from French propaganda.^[5] The Pezzas had some land in olives and were also engaged in the wool trade. The family home has some interesting architectural details, which also suggests some wealth, and they were related to several of the most prominent families in Itri, such as the Ialongo and the Pennachia.^[6]

Although little is known with certainty of his early life, Pezza learned to read and write, hardly a common accomplishment at the time, and further indication of some wealth in the family. As a young man he secured employment as a courier for the Neapolitan Royal Mail, making the 240 km (149 mi) round trip between Terracina and Naples twice a week for 50 ducats a year, a considerable sum, while becoming intimately familiar with the local terrain, which had a reputation for brigandage, knowledge that would later serve him in good stead.^[7] In 1797, while so employed, he vied for the affections of a young woman with another young man. One night his rival and another man ambushed Pezza, intending to do him some harm. Pezza, who reportedly had a "fiery temper," managed to kill both of his attackers. He took to the hills, but was soon caught. Tried, he was convicted of manslaughter, since the slaying had been committed in self-defense, and on October 25, 1797, he was sentenced to a tour in the army in lieu of prison.^[8]

On January 20, 1798, Pezza was enrolled in the Reggimento di Messapi, stationed at Fondi, about a dozen miles north of Itri and perhaps a dozen south of the frontier with the Papal States. Pezza rose quickly, becoming a sergeant, probably because he was literate and, as a member of the middle class and a former Royal courier, already familiar with firearms.^[9] In November of late 1798 Pezza took part in the disastrous attempt of the Neapolitan Army to oust the French from the Papal States.^[10]

The French responded quickly to the Neapolitan incursion, forcing them to retreat, and then undertook an invasion of the Kingdom of Naples. Plagued by cold and heavy rains, the Neapolitans fell back along the Appian Way. Thousands of troops deserted and many more were captured. Pezza, who was with the rear guard, was almost captured by the French, but escaped by donning peasant dress, and took to the hills above Itri.^[11] During the retreat, the Neapolitan Reggimento di Lucania fortified an old Roman villa, the Fortino di San Andrea, located about a mile north of Itri, where a pass carries the Appian Way over the Auruncian Mountains. On December 26, reinforced by some irregulars hastily recruited by Pezza, the regiment ambushed elements of the French "Polish Legion", touching off a three day skirmish. Unable to get through the easily defended defile, some French troops passed down the coast road, along the ancient Via Flacca, from Terracina to capture Sperlonga. The weather was foul, very cold with incessant rains that turned to ice. From Sperlonga, the French began working their way overland across the mountains, to outflank the Neapolitans at the old villa, and by dawn on the 29th were in position to attack. But the French movement had been detected by Pezza’s irregulars, who were patrolling the hills, and they guided the Neapolitan troops safely out of the encirclement, so that they could fall back on the great fortress of Gaeta, about 15 miles down the coast.^[12] The French pressed on, and over the next few weeks, despite unusually cold and icy weather, overran the rest of Naples, capturing the city itself on January 22, 1799 and proclaiming the Parthenopaean Republic. For Pezza, the most critical event of this period occurred on December 30, when French and Polish troops captured Itri. A band of peasants from the vicinity attempted to resist, but were rapidly overcome. The invaders then shot their prisoners, plundered the town a bit, proclaimed a new age of freedom, erected a “Liberty Tree,” and held a ball.^[13]

Resistance to French rule[link]

Though many reform-minded nobles and some intellectuals backed it, the French puppet regime in Naples, the Parthenopaean Republic, had little popular support. In addition, French and Polish troops acted abominably, looting and rape were common. French atrocities were so blatant that their commander in Naples, General Jean Étienne Championnet, was sacked by Guillaume-Charles Faipoult, one of the government Representatives on mission, and subsequently imprisoned.^[14]

Irregular resistance had begun almost as soon as the invaders entered the country, and French atrocities only served to send more young men into the hills to join the insurgency. Attacks on French soldiers became common. The French retaliated swiftly and brutally, which only made matters worse. The experience of Itri was typical. On January 15 two French soldiers were killed while patrolling the Appian Way near the town. The next day a mixed force of French and Polish troops inflicted severe reprisals on the town, looting, raping, and murdering, leaving 60 men, women, and children lying dead in the streets; Michele Pezza’s 67-year old father was among the dead.^[15]

Meanwhile, although in exile in Sicily, the Neapolitan government, effectively controlled by Queen Maria Carolina, wife of King Ferdinand IV of Naples, appointed Fabrizio Ruffo, a progressive government minister and one of the last laymen to hold the dignity of cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, to organized a resistance movement. On February 8, 1799, British and Neapolitan ships landed 5,000 troops and volunteers under Ruffo's command in Calabria. This force soon expanded into an unruly army of laymen and clerics, nobles and peasants, rich and poor, men, women, and children. Dubbed “La Armata cristiana della Santa Fede– The Christian Army of the Holy Faith,” this horde made up for its lack of training and equipment with enthusiasm, ferocity, and suicidal courage.^[16]

Pezza had already organized a small band of irregulars in the northern part of the Terra di Lavoro, and soon became one of Ruffo's principal subordinate commanders. His "massa - band," quickly grew to some 4,000 men, including his three brothers and the scions of a number of the leading families of Itri, such as Pasquale-Maria Nofi, who served as his adjutant with the rank of lieutenant.^[17] With these men, he raided French outposts far and wide. On one occasion he slipped into heavily occupied Fondi in the guise of a priest – thus becoming once again “Fra Diavolo” – to cut down the “Liberty Tree” which the French had planted there, replacing it with a cross that still stands. He even harassed French forces holding Gaeta, the great fortress dominating the northwestern route into the Kingdom of Naples, ambushing supply trains (he once made off with 1,400 sheep) and couriers. Pezza made the Fortino di San Andrea his base of operations, and spread terror against French supporters over a wide area. He soon had a substantial price on his head.^[18]

The city of Naples was liberated from the French in June, Gaeta was recaptured at the end of July by royal troops and Pezza's men, aided by the British fleet. By late September the French had largely been driven out of the kingdom, and a Neapolitan Army had gone on to liberate Rome. The Neapolitan insurrection had probably cost the lives of 50,000 or 60,000 people in the kingdom.

A hard, tough leader, Pezza gave no quarter. His men committed “most monstrous misdeeds,” torturing and murdering hundreds of prisoners of war, including a French general; He was so ferocious that for a time Cardinal Ruffo placed him under arrest for his many atrocities.^[19] Nevertheless, for his services, Pezza was made a colonel in the army, ennobled as the Duke of Cassero, granted an annual pension of 2,500 ducats, making him one of the richest men in the district, and was even given a lock of the queen’s hair. He settled down near Itri with his wife, Fortunata Rachele Di Franco, a local beauty whom he had married in July 1799, when she was just 18, and he was en route to the liberation of Rome. For the next few years they lived quietly, while producing two sons.^[20]

In 1806 Napoleon, Emperor of the French, decided to place his brother Joseph Bonaparte on the Neapolitan throne.^[21] Some 32,000 French troops invaded Naples in January, in three columns under General Laurent de Gouvion-Saint-Cyr, later a Marshal of France; about 12,000 men marched down the Adriatic coast, 15,000 more attacked down the Apennines, which form the spine of Italy, and General Jean Louis Reynier, later a Marshal of France, led about 10,000 troops, down the Appian Way. The Neapolitan Army, with barely 13,000 men available for mobile operations, fell back on Calabria as the French quickly occupied frontier areas and pressed on. By February Reynier's column had captured Fondi and continued on towards Itri. Some Neapolitan troops were garrisoned at Pezza's old base, the Fortino di San Andrea, but they fled south to Itri when the French turned up. The French pursued. There was a short skirmish at Itri, which hardly impeded the French advance. Reynier sent a regiment ahead to seize Gaeta by a coup de main, but the fortress, commanded by the Prince of Hesse-Philippstead, resisted stoutly; he would hold out until July 18.^[22] But if Gaeta stood against them, the French found the rest of Naples easier prey. The capital fell on February 14 as the king and queen once more fled to Sicily, and the French soon overran most of the rest of the kingdom.

When the French invaded, Pezza was recalled to active duty, and ordered to organize a guerrilla column to resist the attackers. But the French moved so fast he was barely able to escape, and fled with his brothers to Sicily. He soon returned, however, and on March 23, 1806, he clashed with the French near Itri.^[23] Shortly afterwards, Pezza was recalled to Sicily to gather more forces, and in April joined an expedition to reinforce Gaeta that was led by the British admiral Sir Sydney Smith, one of Napoleon’s most inveterate foes.

Hesse-Philippstead gave Pezza command of a band of irregulars who were landed along the coast near the mouth of the Garigliano River, about 20 miles southeast of Gaeta, with instructions to stir up guerrilla resistance in the French rear. Pezza conducted several raids against French outposts, but then undertook an ill-advised attack against a substantial French force. Defeated, he fled back to Gaeta, assuming a disguise so as to con a French officer into giving him a pass through the siege lines. To Hesse-Philippstead this smacked of treachery, and he decided that Pezza was secretly in league with the French. Pezza was arrested and sent in chains to Palermo in May 1806. Sir Sidney quickly cleared Pezza’s name, however, and for a few weeks he conducted seaborne raids against French outposts along the coast from Ponza and the other islands in the Gulf of Gaeta.^[24]

On June 4, a small British army inflicted a stunning defeat on the French in the Battle of Maida, in Calabria. Hoping to follow-up this victory, Pezza and a band of followers landed at Amante, in Calabria, on the 26th. Pezza proved to be the most effective of the many guerrilla leaders who had sprung up in the aftermath of the invasion, and soon attracted considerable local support. The French were soon closely invested at Cosenza. Given time the guerrillas might have taken the city. But Gaeta had fallen to the French on July 18, after twelve days of heavy bombardment, during which Hesse-Phillipstread had been gravely wounded. This released some 10,000 French troops, most of whom were promptly sent into Calabria. The various guerrilla leaders unwisely attempted to make a stand at Lauria. There, on August 8 Marshal Massena defeated them, virtually annihilating their forces in a no quarter fight. Although on August 14, with the support of Sir Sydney’s ships, Pezza managed to capture Fort Licosa from the enemy, that very same day the French relieved Cosenza. As by this time enormously superior French forces were on the march, the British decided to withdraw their expedition; this withdrawal arguably prevented the Neapolitan insurgency from developing into an "ulcer" such as the Peninsular War in Spain beginning in 1808.^[25]

Despite the withdrawal of the British, for a time the guerrilla fighting in Calabria intensified. It was a horribly bloody affair, with the French often slaughtering whole villages, and the people massacring French prisoners. Surprisingly, Pezza proved far less ferocious than he had been in 1799. He even turned French prisoners over to the British in return for money and supplies, and once proved enormously courteous to the some French officers’ wives whom he had captured. Nevertheless, the French posted a 50,000 ducat reward for anyone who killed or captured him, a sum equivalent to millions of dollars today.^[26]

Capture and death[link]

Late in August 1806, Sir Sidney transferred Pezza and about 300 of his guerrillas by sea to the coast near Sperlonga, north of Gaeta. For a couple of weeks Pezza caused considerable trouble for the French, raiding local garrisons and ambushing convoys. On September 5, he ambushed and massacred a considerable French force near Itri. As a result, the French organized a “flying column,” which pinned him down near Itri on the 28th. A hot battle resulted, but the French were able to storm his position from three different directions, resulting in the defeat of Pezza's band, which lost more than one hundred killed and about 60 taken prisoner, all of whom were immediately shot by the French. Pezza himself was reported dead, but survived.^[27]

With the remnants of his band, Pezza fled eastwards over the mountains. He was soon operating near Sora in the Abruzzi, with two thousand men and two cannon, having joined forces with other guerrilla leaders. A much stronger French force converged on his base. Pezza failed to retreat in time, and the French closed in on October 24, storming his base camp. Most of his men were killed or captured, and Pezza was again initially thought to be dead, but he had escaped, though wounded; it was, however, to no avail. On November 1, while at Baronissi, near Avellino, he was betrayed and captured in a pharmacy by French Corsican troops under the command of Major Joseph Léopold Sigisbert Hugo, father of the novelist Victor Hugo.^[28]

The French offered Pezza an enormous bribe if he would join them. When he refused, they tried him on charges of banditry, and sentenced him to death. The French spurned an offer by Queen Maria Carolina to exchange 200 French prisoners for him, and on November 9 they hanged him in the Piazza del Mercato at Naples, ostensibly for banditry.

Pezza's last words reportedly were “It pains me that I am condemned as a bandit and not a soldier”.^[29]

Pezza's death did not end the insurrection against the French, as it was not until 1811 that widespread resistance came to an end, and there were still sporadic outbreaks as late as 1815. Over 33,000 suspected guerrillas were arrested during the fighting, and thousands – men, women, and children alike – were killed.^[30]

Legacy[link]

In addition to the works by Alexandre Dumas and Washington Irving, noted above, Pezza figures in a number of other artistic endeavors.

Daniel Auber's opera Fra Diavolo is founded on traditions associated with the legend, but has very little historical accuracy. Laurel and Hardy starred as "Stanlio" and "Ollio" in the 1933 feature film The Devil's Brother (sometimes titled as Fra Diavolo) based on Auber's opera.

There are several other films about Fra Diavolo, a complete listing of which may be found in the Italian Wikipedia site. The most important of these is Fra Diavolo, made in 1942 by Luigi Zampa based a play by of the same name by Luigi Bonelli, later a prolific screenwriter. In the film, Pezza is a Robin Hood-like figure fighting the French.

The only Italian film about Pezza to be available in English is the 1964 Giovanni Addessi produzioni cinematografiche of Rome, production, The Legend of Fra Diavolo, with an Italian cast but starring Tony Russell, which was released in the U.S. by Globe Films International. The film is rather more realistic than the Bonelli effort.

Paul Féval, père used the character of Fra Diavolo in his Les Habits Noirs book series. In it, Michele Bozzo (sic) is the nearly immortal Colonel Bozzo-Corana, feared leader of an international criminal brotherhood.

References[link]

1. ^ Piero Pieri, Storia militare del Risorgimento (Torino: Einaudi, 1962), p. 18. The short accounts in Pieri and Tommaso Argiolas' Storia dell’Esercito Borbonico (Napoli: ESI, 1970), provide succinct treatments of the Neapolitan insurrection of 1799; Milton Finley's The Most Monstrous of Wars: The Neapolitan Guerrilla War in Southern Italy, 1806-1811 (Columbia, S.C.: University of South Carolina, 1994), provides an account of the second Neapolitan insurgency against the French.
2. ^ Alexandre Dumas, The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-hermine in the Age of Napoleon (New York: Pegasus, 2007)
3. ^ Washington Irving, Tales of a Traveler, Vol. III, pp. 8-33
4. ^ Michele M. Colaguori, Itri e S. Francesco di Paola (Gaeta: Poligrafico di Gaeta, 1973), p. 9.
5. ^ See, for example, the Britannica 11th Edition
6. ^ Anna Franchi, Fra Diavolo (Milano: VIR, 1946), pp. 26-27; Giuseppi dall’Ongaro, Fra Diavolo (Novara: De Agostini, 1985), p. 32
7. ^ Franchi, p. 34; Vittorio Gleijeses, Napoli Nostra el la Sua Storia (Napoli: LSE, 1971), p. 121
8. ^ ’Ongaro, pp. 37-39; Gleijeses, p. 121
9. ^ Gleijeses, p. 122.
10. ^ For the brief Neapolitan campaign in the Papal States see Bruto Amante, Fra Diavolo e il Suo Tempo (1796-1806) (reprint, Napoli: Attivita bibliografica editoriale, 1974), pp. 31-36; Adolphe Thiers, History of the French Revolution (London: Richard Bentley, 1881), Vol. V, pp. 328-336, which is the only treatment in English.
11. ^ Ongaro, pp. 41-42.
12. ^ Ongaro, pp. 26-28
13. ^ Amante, pp. 70, 75; Piero Bargellini, Fra Diavolo (Firenze: Vollecchi, 1932), pp. 86-88.
14. ^ Jacques Godechot, La revolution francaise: Chronologie e commente, 1787-1797(Paris: Perrin, 1988), pp. 242-245.
15. ^ Ongaro, pp. 51-52
16. ^ Godechot, p. 245; Giglioli, p. 168.
17. ^ Francesco Barra, Michele Michele Pezza, detto Fra’ Diavlo (Cava di Tirreni: Avagliano, 1999) p. 83, n. 89
18. ^ Gleijeses, p. 123; Charles Lister, Between Two Seas: A Walk Down the Appian Way (London: Secker & Warburg, 1991), pp. 51-52; Dora Jane Hamblin and Mary Jane Grunsfled, The Appian Way: A Journey (New York: n.p., 1974)., p. 68.
19. ^ Finley, p. 76; Lister, p. 54.
20. ^ Pezza has a number of living descendants, in Italy and America, the most notable of whom is his great-great-granddaughter, Maria Alba Pezza, a journalist and the author of Fra Diavolo in valigia: Viaggi alla scoperta del mio antenato (Genova: Liberodiscrivere, 2006)
21. ^ For the Napoleonic domination of Naples see, Robert M Johnston, The Napoleonic Empire in Southern Italy and the Rise of the Secret Societies (London:Macmillan, 1904), and Owen Connelly's Napoleon’s Satellite Kingdoms (New York: The Free Press, 1965),
22. ^ Pieri, pp. 13-14; Argiolas, p. 35.
23. ^ Johnston, II, 112; Francesco Barra, Cronache del Brigantaggio meridionale, 1806-1815 (Salerno & Catanzaro: Societa editrice meridionale, 1981), p. 297-298.
24. ^ Connelly, p. 64; Johnston, II, 113.
25. ^ Connelly, p. 64; Pieri, p. 14; Johnston, II, 127.
26. ^ Finely, p. 76; Gleijeses, p. 124
27. ^ Pieri, p. 15; Amante, pp. 319-320 (who observes that Pezza was officially reported killed by the French on numerous occasions); Johnston, II, p. 144
28. ^ Johnston, II, p. 145; Finely, pp. 77-78; Gleijeses, p. 125. Major Hugo was promptly promoted to colonel
29. ^ Gleijeses, p. 125; Colletta, II, pp. 42-43; Lister, pp. 51-52. Because he asserted that as a military officer he had to be treated as a prisoner of war, the French dressed him in the full uniform of a Neapolitan brigadier general before hanging him.
30. ^ Pieri, p. 16; Connelly, p. 68, 113.

External links[link]

• Notes about Fra Diavolo on Around Napoli
• A short life of Pezza on the Itri town website
• Fra Diavolo and Museo del Brigantaggio in Itri

Further reading[link]

• Bruto Amante (1796–1806). Fra Diavolo e il Suo Tempo (reprint: Attivita bibliografica editoriale, 1974)
• Anna Franchi (1946). Fra Diavolo. VIR.
• Giuseppi dall’Ongaro (1985). Fra Diavolo. De Agostini.
• Francesco Barra (1999). Michele Pezza, detto Fra’ Diavlo. Avagliano. ISBN 978-88-8309-020-2.

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. 

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (January 2012)

Desirée Rancatore

Desirée Rancatore (born 1977 in Palermo, Sicily) is an Italian coloratura soprano with an active career on the opera and concert stages of Europe.

Biography[link]

Desirée Rancatore studied violin and piano before studying singing with her mother at the age of 16 and later in Rome, with Margaret Baker Genovesi. At the age of 19 she debuted as Barbarina in The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg Festival. She returned to the Festival with Die Entfhürung aus dem Serail, Don Carlo (conducted by Lorin Maazel), Jeanne d'Arc au Bûcher (Honegger), Piramo e Tisbe (conducted by Fabio Biondi), and concerts in the Salzburg Mozarteum

She sung for the first time in Italy in 1997 at the opening of the season at the Teatro Regio in Parma L’Arlesiana de Francesco Cilèa). At the age of 21 she debuted in the Teatro Massimo in Palermo (Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier) and sang her first Olympia in Les contes d’Hoffmann (Catania). She has performed the role also at the Opéra National in Paris, at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden in London, at the Zurich Ópera, at the Massimo in Palermo, at the Opera in Rome, the Regio Theatre in Turin^[1] and Parma, the Toulouse Théâtre du Capitole, the Teatro Real in Madrid, la Scala in Milan, the Sferisterio in Macerata, the Orange Opera Festival and the Vienna Staatsoper.

Another of the roles she is known for is Gilda from Rigoletto, which she has performed in Melbourne, San Francisco,^[2] Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Tokyo, Venice, Mexico, Vienna, Verona, Parma, Beijing, Florence and Zurich.

She debuted in the lead role in Lucia di Lammermoor in the Teatro Donizetti in Bergamo in the 2005-06 season, later doing a tour of Japan in this role, which included Tokyo, conducted by Antonino Fogliani. She sang the role again in the Oviedo Opera, in the Zurich Opera, the Comunale in Bologna, the Cilèa in Reggio Calabria and in the Comunale in Ferrara.

Another of her roles is Adina from L’elisir d’amore, which she debuted in Laurent Pelly’s production at the Bastille Opera in Paris and which she performed again in the Teatro Lirico in Cagliari and in La Fenice in Venice. She debuted the lead role in Delibes’ Lakmé, which she has sung in Palermo, the Campoamor in Oviedo and in the Bunka Kaikan in Tokyo. In December 2004, at the reopening of La Scala in Milan, she sang the role of Sémele in Salieri’s L’Europa riconosciuta, conducted by Riccardo Muti. She was invited to open the 2005-6 season at the Bologna Comunale in a new production of Ascanio in Alba and in October 2008 she made her debut as Elvira in Bellini’s I Puritani in Palermo. In 2010 she debuted the role of Amina from La Sonnambula in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.

In concert she has also performed as a soloist in the Petite Messe Solennelle in Paris and in Mozart’s Mass in C Minor in Salzburg, in Mozart’s Requiem (Massimo, Palermo), Pergolesi’s Stabat Mater (Paris, Radio France National Orchestra, conducted by Muti). She also participated in the opening concert of the 2003-04 season at La Scala and has sung with the Turin RAI Symphonic Orchestra and, in a gala alongside Bryn Terfel and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, London, as well as a Spanish tour with the Catania Massimo Bellini Philharmonic.

In 2011 she sung the New Year’s Concert at La Fenice, at the Liverpool Philharmonic Hall,^[3] all'Opera di Zurigo (Rigoletto), at Teatro Massimo Palermo (Lucia di Lammermoor^[4]), at Teatro Greco Siracusa (with Andrea Bocelli ^[5]), at Sferisterio Opera Festival Macerata (Rigoletto^[6]) and at National Center for Performing Arts Bijing (Rigoletto).

Discography[link]

• Falstaff, Giuseppe Verdi. DVD, Opus Arte 1999
• Der Rosenkavalier, Richard Strauss. DVD, Brilliant Classic 2000
• Die Entfhürung aus dem Serail, Wolfgang Amadaeus Mozart. CD, Telarc 2001
• Die Zauberflöte, Wolfgang Amadaeus Mozart. DVD, TDK 2001
• Les Huguenots, Giacomo Meyerbeer. CD, Dynamic 2001
• La cambiale di matrimonio, Gioacchino Rossini. CD, Dynamic 2002
• Mozart in Turkey. DVD, BBC 2003
• Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Jacques Offenbach. DVD, TDK 2004^[7]
• Les Contes d'Hoffmann, Jacques Offenbach. DVD, Dynamic 2005
• Lucia di Lammermoor, Gaetano Donizetti. DVD, Dynamic 2007
• Ascanio in Alba, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. DVD, Bongiovanni 2008
• La cambiale di matrimonio, Gioacchino Rossini. DVD, Naxos 2008
• Die Vögel, Walter Braunfels. DVD, Arthaus Musik 2009
• Lucia di Lammermoor, Gaetano Donizetti. CD, Naxos 2010
• New Years Concert La Fenice. DVD, Hardy 2011

Honours and awards[link]

• 1995: Ibla de Ragusa Award
• 1995: Vincenzo Bellini de Caltanissetta Prize
• 1996: Maria Caniglia de Sulmona Award
• 2004: Medaglia d'Oro Città di Milano Award
• 2008: Mimosa d'Oro Award
• 2008: Kaleidos Award
• 2008: Ester Mazzoleni Special Prize
• 2009: Zenatello Award
• 2010: Oscar della lirica, Verona

References[link]

External links[link]

• Official website

Early photograph of Gioachino Rossini (Ransom Humanities Research Center, The University of Texas at Austin)

Gioachino Antonio Rossini^[1] (Italian pronunciation: [dʒoaˈkiːno anˈtɔːnjo rosˈsiːni] (Giovacchino Antonio Rossini in the baptismal certificate)^[2] (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who wrote 39 operas as well as sacred music, chamber music, songs, and some instrumental and piano pieces. His best-known operas include the Italian comedies Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville) and La Cenerentola and the French-language epics Moïse et Pharaon and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). A tendency for inspired, song-like melodies is evident throughout his scores, which led to the nickname "The Italian Mozart". Until his retirement in 1829, Rossini had been the most popular opera composer in history.^[3]

Early life[link]

Portrait of Gioachino Rossini in 1820, International Museum and Library of Music, Bologna

Gioachino Antonio Rossini was born into a family of musicians in Pesaro, a town on the Adriatic coast of Italy which was then part of the Papal States. His father, Giuseppe, was a horn player and inspector of slaughterhouses. His mother, Anna, was a singer and a baker's daughter. Rossini's parents began his musical training early, and by the age of six he was playing the triangle in his father's musical group.

Rossini's father was sympathetic to the French Revolution and welcomed Napoleon Bonaparte's troops when they arrived in northern Italy. When Austria restored the old regime, Rossini's father was sent to prison in 1799 where he remained until June 1800.^[4] His mother took him to Bologna, making a living as a leading singer at various theatres of the Romagna region. Her husband would ultimately join her in Bologna. During this time, Rossini was frequently left in the care of his aging grandmother, who had difficulty supervising the boy.

He remained at Bologna in the care of a pork butcher while his father played the horn in the orchestras of the theatres at which his wife sang. The boy had three years of instruction in the playing of the harpsichord from Giuseppe Prinetti, originally from Novara, who played the scale with two fingers only; Prinetti also owned a business selling beer and had a propensity to fall asleep while standing. These qualities made him a subject for ridicule in the eyes of the young Rossini.^[5]

Education[link]

He was eventually taken from Prinetti and apprenticed to a blacksmith. In Angelo Tesei, he found a congenial music master, and learned to sight-read, play accompaniments on the piano and sing well enough to take solo parts in the church when he was ten years of age. Important from this period are six sonate a quattro, or string sonatas, composed in three days, unusually scored for two violins, cello and double bass. The original scores, which dated from 1804 when the composer was twelve, were found in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C. Often transcribed for string orchestra, these sonatas reveal the young composer's affinity for Haydn and Mozart, already showing signs of operatic tendencies, punctuated by frequent rhythmic changes and dominated by clear, songlike melodies.

In 1805 he appeared at the theatre of the Commune in Ferdinando Paer's Camilla, his only public appearance as a singer. He was also a capable horn player, treading in the footsteps of his father. Around this time, he composed individual numbers to a libretto by Vincenza Mombelli called Demetrio e Polibio, which was handed to the boy in pieces. Though it was Rossini's first opera, written when he was thirteen or fourteen, the work was not staged until the composer was twenty years old, premiering as his sixth official opera.

In 1806 Rossini became a cello student under Cavedagni at the Conservatorio di Bologna. The following year he was admitted to the counterpoint class of Padre Stanislao Mattei (1750–1825). He learned to play the cello with ease, but the pedantic severity of Mattei's views on counterpoint only served to drive the young composer's views toward a freer school of composition. His insight into orchestral resources is generally ascribed not to the strict compositional rules that he learned from Mattei, but to knowledge gained independently while scoring the quartets and symphonies of Haydn and Mozart. At Bologna, he was known as "il Tedeschino" ("the Little German") on account of his devotion to Mozart.

Early career[link]

Through the friendly interposition of the Marquis Cavalli, his first opera, La cambiale di matrimonio (The Marriage Contract), was produced at Venice when he was a youth of 18 years. But two years before this he had already received the prize at the Conservatorio of Bologna for his cantata Il pianto d'Armonia sulla morte d’Orfeo. Between 1810 and 1813 at Bologna, Rome, Venice and Milan, Rossini produced operas of varying success, most notably La pietra del paragone and Il signor Bruschino, with its brilliant and unique overture. In 1813, Tancredi and L'italiana in Algeri were even bigger successes, and catapulted the 20-year-old composer to international fame.

The libretto for Tancredi was an arrangement by Gaetano Rossi of Voltaire's tragedy Tancrède. Traces of Ferdinando Paer and Giovanni Paisiello were undeniably present in fragments of the music. But any critical feeling on the part of the public was drowned by appreciation of such melodies as "Di tanti palpiti... Mi rivedrai, ti rivedrò", which became so popular that the Italians would sing it in crowds at the law courts until called upon by the judge to desist.

Gioachino Rossini, painted c. 1815 by Vincenzo Camuccini

By the age of 21, Rossini had established himself as the idol of the Italian opera public. He continued to write operas for Venice and Milan during the next few years, but their reception was tame and in some cases unsatisfactory after the success of Tancredi. In 1815 he retired to his home in Bologna, where Domenico Barbaia, the impresario of the Naples theatre, contracted an agreement that made him musical director of the Teatro di San Carlo and the Teatro del Fondo at Naples. He would compose one opera a year for each. His payment was to be 200 ducats per month; he was also to receive a share from the gambling tables set in the theatre's "ridotto", amounting to about 1000 ducats per annum. This was an extraordinarily lucrative arrangement for any professional musician at that time.

He visited the Naples conservatory, and, although less than four years senior to Mercadante, he said to the Director Niccolò Zingarelli, "My compliments Maestro – your young pupil Mercadante begins where we finish."^[6]

Some older composers in Naples, notably Zingarelli and Paisiello, were inclined to intrigue against the success of the youthful composer, but all hostility was rendered futile by the enthusiasm that greeted the court performance of his Elisabetta, regina d'Inghilterra, in which Isabella Colbran, who subsequently became the composer's wife, took a leading part. The libretto of this opera by Giovanni Schmidt was in many of its incidents an anticipation of those presented to the world a few years later in Sir Walter Scott's Kenilworth. The opera was the first in which Rossini wrote out the ornaments of the airs instead of leaving them to the fancy of the singers, and also the first in which the recitativo secco was replaced by a recitative accompanied by a string quartet.

[edit] The Barber of Seville (Il barbiere di Siviglia)

Isabella Colbran

Rossini's most famous opera was produced on 20 February 1816, at the Teatro Argentina in Rome. The libretto, a version of Pierre Beaumarchais' stage play Le Barbier de Séville, was newly written by Cesare Sterbini and not the same as that already used by Giovanni Paisiello in his own Barbiere, an opera which had enjoyed European popularity for more than a quarter of a century. Much is made of how quickly Rossini's opera was written, scholarship generally agreeing upon two or three weeks. Later in life, Rossini claimed to have written the opera in only twelve days. It was a colossal failure when it premiered as Almaviva; Paisiello's admirers were extremely indignant, sabotaging the production by whistling and shouting during the entire first act. However, not long after the second performance, the opera became so successful that the fame of Paisiello's opera was transferred to Rossini's, to which the title The Barber of Seville passed as an inalienable heritage.

Later in 1822, a 30-year-old Rossini succeeded in meeting Ludwig van Beethoven, who was then aged 51, deaf, cantankerous and in failing health. Communicating in writing, Beethoven noted: “Ah, Rossini. So you’re the composer of The Barber of Seville. I congratulate you. It will be played as long as Italian opera exists. Never try to write anything else but opera buffa; any other style would do violence to your nature.”^[3]

Marriage and mid-career[link]

Caricature by H. Mailly on the cover of Le Hanneton, July 4, 1867

Between 1815 and 1823 Rossini produced 20 operas. Of these Otello formed the climax to his reform of serious opera, and offers a suggestive contrast with the treatment of the same subject at a similar point of artistic development by the composer Giuseppe Verdi. In Rossini's time the tragic close was so distasteful to the public of Rome that it was necessary to invent a happy conclusion to Otello.

Conditions of stage production in 1817 are illustrated by Rossini's acceptance of the subject of Cinderella for a libretto only on the condition that the supernatural element should be omitted. The opera La Cenerentola was as successful as Barbiere. The absence of a similar precaution in construction of his Mosè in Egitto led to disaster in the scene depicting the passage of the Israelites through the Red Sea, when the defects in stage contrivance always raised a laugh, so that the composer was at length compelled to introduce the chorus "Dal tuo stellato soglio" to divert attention from the dividing waves.

In 1822, four years after the production of this work, Rossini married the renowned opera singer Isabella Colbran. In the same year, he moved from Italy to Vienna where his operas were the rage of the audiences. He directed his Cenerentola in Vienna, where Zelmira was also performed. After this he returned to Bologna, but an invitation from Prince Metternich to come to Verona and "assist in the general re-establishment of harmony" was too tempting to refuse, and he arrived at the Congress in time for its opening on October 20, 1822. Here he made friends with Chateaubriand and Dorothea Lieven.

In 1823, at the suggestion of the manager of the King's Theatre, London, he came to England, being much fêted on his way through Paris. In England he was given a generous welcome, which included an introduction to King George IV and the receipt of £7000 after a residence of five months. The next year he became musical director of the Théâtre des Italiens in Paris at a salary of £800 per annum. Rossini’s popularity in Paris was so great that Charles X gave him a contract to write five new operas a year, and at the expiration of the contract he was to receive a generous pension for life.

End of career[link]

Gioachino Rossini, photographed by Félix Nadar, 1858

During his Paris years, between 1824 and 1829, Rossini created the comic opera Le Comte Ory and Guillaume Tell (William Tell). The production of the latter in 1829 brought his career as a writer of opera to a close. He was thirty-eight years old and had already composed thirty-eight operas. Guillaume Tell was a political epic adapted from Schiller’s play (1804) about the 13th-century Swiss patriot who rallied his country against the Austrians. The libretto was by Étienne Jouy and Hippolyte Bis, but their version was revised by Armand Marrast.^[7]

The music is remarkable for its freedom from the conventions discovered and utilized by Rossini in his earlier works, and marks a transitional stage in the history of opera, the overture serving as a model for romantic overtures throughout the 19th century. Though an excellent opera, it is rarely heard uncut today, as the original score runs more than four hours in performance. The overture is one of the most famous and frequently recorded works in the classical repertoire.

In 1829 he returned to Bologna. His mother had died in 1827, and he was anxious to be with his father. Arrangements for his subsequent return to Paris on a new agreement were temporarily upset by the abdication of Charles X and the July Revolution of 1830. Rossini, who had been considering the subject of Faust for a new opera, did return, however, to Paris in November of that year.

Six movements of his Stabat Mater were written in 1832 by Rossini himself and the other six by Giovanni Tadolini, a good musician who was asked by Rossini to complete the work. However, Rossini composed the rest of the score in 1841. The success of the work bears comparison with his achievements in opera, but his comparative silence during the period from 1832 to his death in 1868 makes his biography appear almost like the narrative of two lives—the life of swift triumph and the long life of seclusion, of which biographers give us pictures in stories of the composer's cynical wit, his speculations in fish culture, his mask of humility and indifference.

Later years[link]

Gioachino Rossini, photographed by Étienne Carjat, 1865

His first wife died in 1845, and on 16 August 1846, he married Olympe Pélissier, who had sat for Vernet for his picture of Judith and Holofernes. Political disturbances compelled Rossini to leave Bologna in 1848. After living for a time in Florence, he settled in Paris in 1855, where he hosted many artistic and literary figures. Rossini had been a well-known gourmand and an excellent amateur chef his entire life, but he indulged these two passions fully once he retired from composing, and today there are a number of dishes with the appendage "alla Rossini" to their names that were either created by or specifically for him. Probably the most famous of these is Tournedos Rossini, still served by many restaurants today.

In the meantime, after years of various physical and mental illnesses, he had slowly returned to music, composing obscure little works intended for private performance. These included his Péchés de vieillesse ("Sins of Old Age"), which are grouped into 14 volumes, mostly for solo piano, occasionally for voice and various chamber ensembles. Often whimsical, these pieces display Rossini’s natural ease of composition and gift for melody, showing obvious influences of Beethoven and Chopin, with many flashes of the composer’s long buried desire for serious, academic composition. He died at the age of 76 from pneumonia at his country house at Passy on Friday, 13 November 1868. He was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris, France. In 1887, his remains were moved to the Basilica di Santa Croce di Firenze, in Florence, at the request of the Italian government.

Honors and tributes[link]

Rossini's now-empty tomb at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris

Rossini was a foreign associate of the institute, grand officer of the Legion of Honour and recipient of innumerable orders.

Immediately after Rossini's death, Giuseppe Verdi proposed to collaborate with twelve other Italian composers on a Requiem for Rossini, to be performed on the first anniversary of Rossini's death, conducted by Angelo Mariani. The music was written, but the performance was abandoned shortly before its scheduled premiere. Verdi re-used the "Libera me, Domine" he had written for the Rossini Requiem in his 1872 Requiem for Manzoni. In 1989 the conductor Helmuth Rilling recorded the original Requiem for Rossini in its world premiere.

In 1900 Giuseppe Cassioli created a monument to Rossini in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence.^[8]

Rossiniana[link]

Mauro Giuliani (who died in 1829) wrote six sets of variations for guitar on themes by Rossini, Opp. 119–124 (c. 1820-1828). Each set was called "Rossiniana", and collectively they are called "Rossiniane". This was the first known tribute by one composer to another using a title of the form -ana.

In 1925, Ottorino Respighi orchestrated four pieces from Péchés de vieillesse as the suite Rossiniana (he had earlier used pieces from the same collection as the basis of his ballet La Boutique fantasque).

Notes[link]

Portrait of Gioachino Rossini by Francesco Hayez, 1870.
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

In his compositions, Rossini plagiarized freely from himself, a common practice among deadline-pressed opera composers of the time. Few of his operas are without such admixtures, frankly introduced in the form of arias or overtures. For example, in Il Barbiere there is an aria for the Count (often omitted) "Cessa di più resistere", which Rossini used (with minor changes) in the cantata Le Nozze di Teti e di Peleo and in La Cenerentola (the cabaletta for Angelina's rondo is almost unchanged). Moreover, four of his best known overtures (La cambiale di matrimonio, Tancredi, La Cenerentola and The Barber of Seville) share operas apart from those with which they are most famously associated.

A characteristic mannerism in Rossini's orchestral scoring is a long, steady building of sound over an ostinato figure, creating "tempests in teapots by beginning in a whisper and rising to a flashing, glittering storm,"^[9] which earned him the nickname of "Signor Crescendo".

A few of Rossini's operas remained popular throughout his lifetime and continuously since his demise; others were resurrected from semi-obscurity in the last half of the 20th century, during the so-called "bel canto revival."

Rossini's final resting place, in the Basilica of Santa Croce, Florence

According to Herbert Weinstock's 1968 biography (see below), the composer's estate was valued at 2.5 million francs upon his death in 1868, the equivalent of about 1.4 million US dollars. Apart from some individual legacies in favour of his wife and relatives,^[10] Rossini willed his entire estate to the Commune of Pesaro.^[11] The inheritance was invested to establish a Liceo Musicale (Conservatory) in the town. When, in 1940, the Liceo was put under state control and turned into the Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini", the corporate body to which Rossini’s inheritance had been conveyed, assumed the style of Fondazione G. Rossini. The ends of the institution which is still in full activity, are to support the Conservatorio initiatives and to promote the study and the spread worldwide of the figure, the memory and the works of Rossini. The institution has collaborated since the beginning with the Rossini Opera Festival.^[12]

Rossini's estate also provided funding for the Prix Rossini, a prize to be awarded to young composers and librettist. The provision took effect in 1878 on the death of his widow and was awarded by the Académie des Beaux-Arts. Prize-winning works were produced by the Société des Concerts, Institut de France, from 1885 to 1911.^[13]

Works[link]

References[link]

Notes

Sources

• Faul, Michel (2009), Les aventures militaires, littéraires et autres d'Étienne de Jouy, Editions Seguier, France, March 2009, ISBN 978-2-84049-556-7
• Fisher, Burton D., The Barber of Seville (Opera Classics Library Series). Grand Rapids: Opera Journeys, 2005. ISBN 1-930841-96-5 ISBN 1-930841-96-5
• Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. Material now in the public domain is incorporated into this article.
• Gossett, Philip, "Rossini, Gioachino" in Grove Music Online. Oxford Music Online, 17 November 2009
• Osborne, Richard, Rossini: His Life and Works. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007 ISBN 978-1-55553-088-4
• Holoman, D. Kern (2004), The Societ́e ́des concerts du conservatoire, 1828-1967. University of California Press ISBN 0-520-23664-5 ISBN 9780520236646
• Osborne, Richard, "Rossini" in The Musical Times, Vol. 127, No. 1726 (December 1986), 691 (Musical Times Publications Ltd.) Access online
• (Italian) Radiciotti, Giuseppe, Gioacchino Rossini: vita documentata, opere ed influenza su l'arte, Tivoli, Majella, 1927-1929
• Steen, Michael, The Lives and Times of the Great Composers NY: Oxford University Press, 2004 ISBN 1-84046-679-0 ISBN 1-84046-679-0
• Weinstock, Herbert, Rossini: A Biography. New York, Knopf, 1968 ISBN 0-87910-102-4 ISBN 0-87910-102-4

External links[link]

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