Biography
Born in Maiolati in the province of Ancona, now Maiolati Spontini, he spent most of his career in Paris and Berlin, but returned to his place of birth at the end of his life. During the first two decades of the 19th Century, Spontini was an important figure in French opera. In his more than twenty operas, Spontini strove to adapt Gluck's classical tragédie lyrique to the contemporary taste for melodrama, for grander spectacle (in Fernand Cortez for example), for enriched orchestral timbre, and for melodic invention allied to idiomatic expressiveness of words. His single great masterpiece and success was La vestale.As a youth, Spontini studied at the Conservatorio della Pietà de' Turchini in Naples. In 1803, he went to Paris, where he was appointed court composer in 1805.
In 1807, Spontini wrote La vestale, his best known work. Written with the encouragement of Empress Joséphine, its premiere at the Opéra in Paris established Spontini as one of the greatest Italian composers of his age. His contemporaries Cherubini and Meyerbeer considered it a masterpiece, and later composers like Berlioz and Wagner admired it. During the Peninsular War, “Napoleon promoted works such as Gasparo Spontini’s Fernand Cortez (1809),” which concerned the Spanish conquest of Mexico under the reign of Charles V. Spontini's later, likewise highly regarded Olimpie (1819, revised 1820, 1826) met with indifference, leading him to leave Paris for Prussia, where he became Kapellmeister and chief conductor at the Berlin Hofoper.
During the 20th Century, Spontini's operas were only rarely performed, although several had their first revivals in years. Perhaps the most famous modern production was the revival of La vestale with Maria Callas at La Scala at the opening of the 1954 season, to mark the 180th anniversary of the composer's birth. The stage director was famed cinematic director Luchino Visconti. That production was also the La Scala debut of tenor Franco Corelli. Callas recorded the arias "Tu che invoco" and "O Nume tutela" from La vestale in 1955 (as did Rosa Ponselle in 1926). In 1969, conductor Fernando Previtali revived the opera, with soprano Leyla Gencer and baritone Renato Bruson. (An unofficial recording is in circulation.) In 1995, conductor Riccardo Muti recorded it with a cast of lesser-known singers.
Other revivals of Spontini include Agnese von Hohenstaufen at the Maggio Musicale festival in Florence in 1954, starring Franco Corelli and conducted by Vittorio Gui, and in Rome in 1970, with Montserrat Caballé and Antonietta Stella, conducted by Riccardo Muti. Fernando Cortez was revived in 1951, with a young Renata Tebaldi, at the San Carlo in Naples, conducted by Gabriele Santini. The premiere of the integral version of the work took place at the Erfurt (Germany) opera house (2006, Jean-Paul Penin, conductor).
Works
| Completion | Title | Length | Première | Libretto |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1796 | Li puntigli delle donne | 2 acts | Carnival 1796, Rome, Pallacorda di firenze | |
| 1797 | Adelina Senese o sia l'Amore secreto | 2 acts | 10 October 1797, Venice, Teatro S. Samuele | Giovanni Bertati, La principessa d'Amalfi |
| 1797-1798 | Il finto pittore | 1797/1798 (?) Rome; 1800 Palermo, Teatro S. Cecilia | ||
| 1798 | L’eroismo ridicolo | 1 act | Carnival 1798, Naples, Teatro Nuovo sopra Toledo | D. Piccinni |
| 1798 | Il Teseo riconosciuto | 2 acts | 22 May 1798, Florence, Regio Teatro degli Intrepidi | Cosimo Giotti |
| 1799 | La finta filosofa | 2 acts | 1 July 1799, Naples, Teatro Nuovo | D. Piccinni |
| 1800 | La fuga in maschera | 2 acts | Carnival, 1800, Naples, Teatro Nuovo | G. Palomba |
| 1800 | I quadri parlanti | 1800, Palermo, Teatro S. Cecilia | ||
| 1800 | Gli Elisi delusi | 2 acts | 28 August 1800, Palermo, Teatro S. Cecilia | M. Monti |
| 1801 | Gli amanti in cimento, o sia Il geloso audace | 2 acts | 3 November 1801, Rome, Teatro Valle | Giovanni Bertati |
| 1802 | Le metamorfosi di Pasquale, o sia Tutto è illusione nel mondo | 1 act | Carnival 1802, Venice, Teatro Giustiniani in S. Moisè | Giuseppe Foppa |
| 1804 | La petite maison | 3 acts | 12 May 1804, Paris, Opéra-Comique, Théâtre Feydeau | Joseph Marie Armand Michel Dieulafoy and N. Gersin |
| 1804 | Milton | 1 act | 27 November 1804, Paris, Opéra Comique, Salle Favart | Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy and Joseph Marie Armand Michel Dieulafoy |
| 1805 | Julie, ou le Pot de fleurs | 1 act | 12 March 1805, Paris, Opéra Comique, Salle Favart | Antoine Gabriel Jars |
| 1805 | La vestale | 3 acts | 15 December 1807, Paris, Grand Opéra Garnier, in French; 26 December 1824, Milan, Teatro alla Scala, in Italian | Victor-Joseph Étienne de Jouy, after Johann Joachim Winckelmann, Monumenti antichi inediti, (1767) |
| 1809 | Fernand Cortez ou La conquête de Mexique; Third version: Fernand Cortez oder Die Eroberung von Mexiko | 3 acts | 28 November 1809, Paris, Grand Opéra Garnier; Second version: 28 May 1817, Paris, Opéra Garnier; Third version: 6 April 1824, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus; Fourth version: 26 February 1832, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus | Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy and Joseph-Alphonse d'Esménard, after Alexis Piron Second version: revised by Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy Third version: revised by Emmanuel Théaulon, translated by J. C. May Fourth version: revised by K. von Lichtenstein |
| 1814 | Pélage, ou Le roi et la paix | 2 acts | 23 August 1814, Paris, Opéra Garnier | Victor-Joseph Etienne de Jouy |
| 1816 | Les dieux rivaux, ou Les fêtes de Cythère; (Together with: Rudolphe Kreutzer, L.-L. Loiseau de Persius and Henri Montan Berton) | 1 act | 21 June 1816, Paris, Opéra Garnier | Joseph Marie Armand Michel Dieulafoy and Charles Brifaut |
| 1819 | Olimpie; Second version as: Olimpia; Third version again as: Olimpie | 3 acts | 22 December 1819, Paris, Grand Opéra Garnier; Second version: 14 May 1821, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus; Third version: 28 February 1826, Paris, Opéra Garnier | Joseph Marie Armand Michel Dieulafoy and Charles Brifaut, after Voltaire; Second version: revised by Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann |
| 1822 | Nurmahal, oder das Rosenfest von Caschmir | 2 acts | 27 May 1822, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus | Carl Alexander Herklots, after T. Moore, Lalla Rookh |
| 1825 | Alcidor | 3 acts | 23 May 1825, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus; on the occasion of the marriage of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands and Princess Louise of Prussia (21 May 1825) | Marie-Emmanuel-Guillaume Théaulon de Lambert and C. Nutty, after Rochon de Chabannes; German translation: Carl Alexander Herklots |
| 1829 | Agnes von Hohenstaufen | 2 acts | 28 May 1827, Berlin, Königliches Opernhaus | Ernst Raupach |
References
External links
- Fondazione Pergolesi Spontini of Jesi
- Jean-Paul Penin, Fernand Cortez
- Fernand Cortez.
- ESDF-Opera: details of Spontini premieres
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Last updated on Thursday July 17, 2008 at 00:51:02 PDT (GMT -0700)
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