Ponchielli, Amilcare, 1834-86, Italian composer of several very successful operas. Only La Gioconda (1876), with libretto by Boito after Hugo's Angelo, is still performed.

known as Il Duce

(born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italy—died April 28, 1945, near Dongo) Italian dictator (1922–43). An unruly but intelligent youth, he became an ardent socialist and served as editor of the party newspaper, Avanti! (1912–14). When he reversed his opposition to World War I, he was ousted by the party. He founded the pro-war Il Popolo d'Italia, served with the Italian army (1915–17), then returned to his editorship. Advocating government by dictatorship, he formed a political group in 1919 that marked the beginning of fascism. A dynamic and captivating orator at rallies, he organized the March on Rome (1922) to prevent a socialist-led general strike. After the government fell, he was appointed prime minister, the youngest in Italian history. He obtained a law to establish the fascists as the majority party and became known as Il Duce (“The Leader”). He restored order to the country and introduced social reforms and public works improvements that won widespread popular support. His dreams of empire led to the invasion of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) in 1935. Supported in his fascist schemes by Adolf Hitler but wary of German power, Mussolini agreed to the Rome-Berlin Axis and declared war on the Allies in 1940. Italian military defeats in Greece and North Africa led to growing disillusionment with Mussolini. After the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943), the Fascist Grand Council dismissed him from office. He was arrested and imprisoned but rescued by German commandos, then became head of the Hitler-installed puppet government at Salò in northern Italy. As German defenses in Italy collapsed in 1945, Mussolini tried to escape to Austria but was captured and executed by Italian partisans.

Learn more about Mussolini, Benito (Amilcare Andrea) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

known as Il Duce

(born July 29, 1883, Predappio, Italy—died April 28, 1945, near Dongo) Italian dictator (1922–43). An unruly but intelligent youth, he became an ardent socialist and served as editor of the party newspaper, Avanti! (1912–14). When he reversed his opposition to World War I, he was ousted by the party. He founded the pro-war Il Popolo d'Italia, served with the Italian army (1915–17), then returned to his editorship. Advocating government by dictatorship, he formed a political group in 1919 that marked the beginning of fascism. A dynamic and captivating orator at rallies, he organized the March on Rome (1922) to prevent a socialist-led general strike. After the government fell, he was appointed prime minister, the youngest in Italian history. He obtained a law to establish the fascists as the majority party and became known as Il Duce (“The Leader”). He restored order to the country and introduced social reforms and public works improvements that won widespread popular support. His dreams of empire led to the invasion of Abyssinia (later Ethiopia) in 1935. Supported in his fascist schemes by Adolf Hitler but wary of German power, Mussolini agreed to the Rome-Berlin Axis and declared war on the Allies in 1940. Italian military defeats in Greece and North Africa led to growing disillusionment with Mussolini. After the Allied invasion of Sicily (1943), the Fascist Grand Council dismissed him from office. He was arrested and imprisoned but rescued by German commandos, then became head of the Hitler-installed puppet government at Salò in northern Italy. As German defenses in Italy collapsed in 1945, Mussolini tried to escape to Austria but was captured and executed by Italian partisans.

Learn more about Mussolini, Benito (Amilcare Andrea) with a free trial on Britannica.com.

Amilcare Ponchielli (August 31, 1834 – January 16, 1886) was an Italian composer, largely of operas.

Biography

Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.

Two years after leaving the conservatory he wrote his first opera -- it was based on Alessandro Manzoni's great novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) -- and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame.

His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship at the Milan Conservatory that he had won in a competition, he took small-time jobs in small cities, and composed several operas,none successful at first. In spite of his disappointment, he gained much experience as the "capobanda" in Piacenza and Cremona, arranging and composing over 200 works for wind band. Notable among his "original" compositions for band are the first-ever concerto for euphonium (Concerto per Flicornobasso, 1872), fifteen variations on the Neapolitan song "Carnevale di Venezia," and a series of festive and funeral marches that resound with the pride of the newly unified Italy and the private grief of his fellow Cremonese. The turning point was the big success of the revised version of I promessi sposi in 1872, which brought him a contract with the music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. and the musical establishment at the Conservatory and at La Scala. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success.

The following opera, I Lituani (The Lithuanians) (1874), was also well received, being performed later at Saint Petersburg (as Aldona - November 20, 1884). His best known opera is La Gioconda, which his librettist Arrigo Boito adapted from the same play by Victor Hugo that had been previously set by Mercadante (Il Giuramento, 1837) and Carlos Gomes (Fosca, 1873). It was first produced in 1876 and revised several times. The version that has become so popular today was first given in 1880.

In 1876 he started working on I mori di Valenza (the project dates back to 1873), an opera he never finished, although it was completed later by Arturo Cadore and performed posthumously in 1914.

After La Gioconda, Ponchielli wrote the monumental biblical melodrama in four acts Il figliuol prodigo (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, December 26, 1880) and Marion Delorme, from another play by Victor Hugo (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, March 17, 1885). In spite of their rich musical invention, neither of these operas met with the same success but both exerted great influence on the composers of the rising generation, like Puccini, Mascagni and Giordano.

In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed maestro di cappella of the Bergamo Cathedral, and from the same year he was a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where among his students were Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni.

He died in Milan and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale.

Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential, in introducing an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration, the only one of his operas regularly performed today is La Gioconda. It contains the great tenor romanza "Cielo e mar", a wonderful duet for tenor and baritone "Enzo Grimaldo" , the soprano set-piece "Suicidio!" and the ballet music "The Dance of the Hours", known even to the non-musical from its use in Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), burlesques by Allan Sherman ("Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", 1963), in the children's record Gossamer Wump (released in 1949 by Capitol Records), and Spike Jones (1949), and, to a lesser degree, the 1966 Perrey and Kingsley song, "Countdown To 6."

Operas

Completion	Title	Genre	Length	Première	Libretto
1856	I promessi sposi, op. 2	melodramma	4 acts	30 August 1856, Cremona, Teatro Concordia, (revised) 5 December 1872, Milan, Teatro Dal Verme	Giuseppe Aglio and Cesare Stradivari after Alessandro Manzoni
1858	Bertrando die Bormio		4 acts	scheduled for Turin but unperformed
1861	La Savoiarda, op. 4, revised as Lina	dramma lirico	3 acts	19 January 1861, Cremona, Teatro Concordia, (revised) 17 November 1877, Milan, Teatro Dal Verme	Francesco Guidi
1863	Roderigo re dei Goti		3 acts	26 December 1863, Piacenza, Teatro Municipale	Francesco Guidi
1873	Il parlatore eterno, op. 6	scherzo comico	1 act	18 October 1873, Lecco, Teatro Sociale	Antonio Ghislanzoni
1874-?	I mori di Valenza, op. 8	dramma lirico	4 acts	completed by Annibale Ponchielli and Arturo Cadore; 17 March 1914, Monte Carlo	Antonio Ghislanzoni
1874	I Lituani, op. 7	dramma lirico	3 acts	7 March 1874, Milan, Teatro alla Scala (revised) 6 March 1875, Milan, Teatro alla Scala	Antonio Ghislanzoni
1876	La Gioconda	dramma lirico	4 acts	8 April 1876, Milan, Teatro alla Scala, (revised) 18 October 1876 Venice, Rossini, (revised) 27 November 1879 Genoa, Politeama Genovese	Tobia Gorrio (pseudonym of Arrigo Boito) after Victor Hugo's drama Angelo, tyran de Padoue
1880	Il figliuol prodigo, op. 10	melodramma	4 acts	26 December 1880, Milan, Teatro alla Scala	Angelo Zanardini
1885	Marion Delorme, op. 11	melodramma	4 acts	17 March 1885 Milan, Teatro alla Scala	Enrico Golisciani

External links

• Stanford list of Ponchielli operas
• Opera Italiana: Amilcare Ponchielli (in English)
• Recording of

References

Bibliography

• Kaufman: Annals of Italian Opera: Verdi and his Major Contemporaries; Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1990. (contains premiere casts and performance histories of Ponchielli's operas)
• Budden, Julien (1992), 'Ponchielli, Amilcare' in The New Grove Dictionary of Opera, ed. Stanley Sadie (London) ISBN 0-333-73432-7
• Various authors: Amilcare Ponchielli; Nuove Edizioni, Milan, 1985
• Various authors: Amilcare Ponchielli 1834-1886, Cremona, 1984
• Sirch-Howey: The Doctrine of a Critical Edition of the Band Music of Amilcare Ponchielli (http://philomusica.unipv.it/annate/2004-5/saggi/sirchhowey/index.html)