Amilcare Ponchielli
Encyclopedia
Composer
A composer is a person who creates music, either by musical notation or oral tradition, for interpretation and performance, or through direct manipulation of sonic material through electronic media...
, largely of opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
s.
Biography
Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno PonchielliPaderno Ponchielli
Paderno Ponchielli is a town and comune in the province of Cremona, in Lombardy, Italy.This comune was known as Paderno Fasolaro but later changed its name in honor of Amilcare Ponchielli, who was born there in 1834....
, near Cremona
Cremona
Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...
, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony
Symphony
A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, scored almost always for orchestra. A symphony usually contains at least one movement or episode composed according to the sonata principle...
by the time he was ten years old.
Two years after leaving the conservatory he wrote his first opera
Opera
Opera is an art form in which singers and musicians perform a dramatic work combining text and musical score, usually in a theatrical setting. Opera incorporates many of the elements of spoken theatre, such as acting, scenery, and costumes and sometimes includes dance...
-- it was based on Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Manzoni
Alessandro Francesco Tommaso Manzoni was an Italian poet and novelist.He is famous for the novel The Betrothed , generally ranked among the masterpieces of world literature...
's great novel The Betrothed (I promessi sposi) -- and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame.
His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship is very good 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 bandmaster (capobanda) in Piacenza
Piacenza
Piacenza is a city and comune in the Emilia-Romagna region of northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Piacenza...
and Cremona
Cremona
Cremona is a city and comune in northern Italy, situated in Lombardy, on the left bank of the Po River in the middle of the Pianura Padana . It is the capital of the province of Cremona and the seat of the local City and Province governments...
, arranging and composing over 200 works for wind band. Notable among his "original" compositions for band are the first-ever concerto for euphonium
Euphonium
The euphonium is a conical-bore, tenor-voiced brass instrument. It derives its name from the Greek word euphonos, meaning "well-sounding" or "sweet-voiced"...
(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
Italian unification
Italian unification was the political and social movement that agglomerated different states of the Italian peninsula into the single state of Italy in the 19th century...
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
La Scala
La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...
. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success.
The following opera, I Lituani
I Lituani
I Lituani is an opera consisting of a prologue and three acts by Amilcare Ponchielli to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on the historical poem Konrad Wallenrod written by Polish poet Adam Mickiewicz...
(The Lithuanians) (1874), was also well received, being performed later at Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg
Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...
(as Aldona - November 20, 1884). His best known opera is La Gioconda
La Gioconda (opera)
La Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli set to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835...
, which his librettist Arrigo Boito
Arrigo Boito
Arrigo Boito , aka Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito, pseudonym Tobia Gorrio, was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist and composer, best known today for his libretti, especially those for Giuseppe Verdi's operas Otello and Falstaff, and his own opera Mefistofele...
adapted from the same play by Victor Hugo
Victor Hugo
Victor-Marie Hugo was a Frenchpoet, playwright, novelist, essayist, visual artist, statesman, human rights activist and exponent of the Romantic movement in France....
that had been previously set by Mercadante
Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond his own lifetime, he composed as impressive a number of works as either; and his development of...
(Il giuramento
Il giuramento
Il giuramento is an opera in three acts by the Italian composer Saverio Mercadante. The libretto, by Gaetano Rossi, is based on Victor Hugo's play Angélo, tyran de Padoue...
, 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 Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Puccini
Giacomo Antonio Domenico Michele Secondo Maria Puccini was an Italian composer whose operas, including La bohème, Tosca, Madama Butterfly, and Turandot, are among the most frequently performed in the standard repertoire...
, Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Mascagni
Pietro Antonio Stefano Mascagni was an Italian composer most noted for his operas. His 1890 masterpiece Cavalleria rusticana caused one of the greatest sensations in opera history and single-handedly ushered in the Verismo movement in Italian dramatic music...
and Umberto Giordano
Umberto Giordano
Umberto Menotti Maria Giordano was an Italian composer, mainly of operas.He was born in Foggia in Puglia, southern Italy, and studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples...
.
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 Puccini, Mascagni and Emilio Pizzi
Emilio Pizzi
Emilio Pizzi was an Italian composer. His output of works include 10 operas, a ballet, an oratorio, and numerous vocal and chamber works....
.
He died in Milan and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale
Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
The Cimitero Monumentale in Milan, Italy is a very large cemetery, noted for its abundance of highly artistic and often imposing tombs.It was designed by the architect Carlo Maciachini...
.
Legacy
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 GiocondaLa Gioconda (opera)
La Gioconda is an opera in four acts by Amilcare Ponchielli set to an Italian libretto by Arrigo Boito, based on Angelo, tyran de Padoue, a play in prose by Victor Hugo, dating from 1835...
. It contains the great tenor romanza
Romanza
-Commercial performance:First in Europe, then charts around the world, the album amassed a multitude of platinum and multi-platinum awards, outselling even Bocelli's 1995 album, Bocelli, with worldwide sales in excess of 20 million copies to date....
"Cielo e mar", a superb duet for tenor and baritone "Enzo Grimaldo", the soprano set-piece "Suicidio!" and the ballet music "The Dance of the Hours
Dance of the Hours
Dance of the Hours is a short ballet from Act 3, Scene 2 of the opera La Gioconda composed by Amilcare Ponchielli. It depicts the hours of the day through solo and ensemble dances. The opera was first performed in 1876 and was revised in 1880...
", known even to the non-musical from its use in Walt Disney
Walt Disney
Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...
's Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...
(1940), Alan Sherman
Alan Sherman
Alan Theodore Sherman is an associate professor of computer science at UMBC, director of the UMBC Center for Information Security and Assurance , and faculty advisor of the UMBC Chess club...
's novelty song, "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh " is a Grammy Award-winning novelty song by Allan Sherman, based on letters of complaint he received from his son Robert while Robert attended Camp Champlain in Westport, New York. The song is a parody that complains about the fictional "Camp Granada" and is set to the...
", and other popular works.
External links
- Stanford list of Ponchielli operas
- Opera Italiana: Amilcare Ponchielli (in English)
- Recording of