Giuseppe Sinopoli
Encyclopedia
Giuseppe Sinopoli was an Italian
conductor
and composer
.
, Italy
, and later studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
in Venice under Ernesto Rubin de Cervin
and at Darmstadt
, including being mentored in composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen
. He also obtained a degree in medicine
from the University of Padua
, and completed a dissertation on criminal anthropology
.
works, becoming professor of contemporary and electronic music at the Venice Conservatoire Benedetto Marcello in 1972, and a major proponent of the new movement in Venice
for contemporary music. He studied conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music under Hans Swarowsky
; and in Venice, founded the Bruno Maderna
Ensemble in the 1970s. His single most famous composition is perhaps his opera Lou Salomé, which received its first production in Munich in 1981, with Karan Armstrong
in the title role.
Sinopoli was appointed principal conductor of the Philharmonia
in 1984, and served in this position until 1994, making a number of recordings with them, including music of Elgar
and the complete symphonies of Mahler
. He became principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden
in 1992. He also joined the Bayreuth Festival
's roster of conductors. He is best known for his intense and sometimes controversial interpretations of opera
, especially works by Italian composers and Richard Strauss
. Sinopoli specialized in late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century music, from Wagner and Verdi to Strauss, Mahler and the Second Viennese School
. His conducting was the object of much controversy, especially in the symphonic genre, with some berating the "eccentricity" of his interpretations and even doubting his conducting abilities (in Norman Lebrecht's book The Maestro Myth Lebrecht interviewed many players who performed under Sinopoli who insisted that as a conductor he was actually incompetent) while others praised the insightfulness of his often intellectual approach to works.
On 20 April 2001, Sinopoli died of a heart attack
while conducting Giuseppe Verdi
's Aida
at the Deutsche Oper
in Berlin
. The performance was dedicated to the memory of the company's late chief director, Goetz Friedrich. Two nights later, Marcello Viotti
stepped in to direct Aida, and dedicated his performance to Sinopoli's memory. His funeral in Rome on 23 April was attended by the Italian President and Prime Minister, as well as a large contingent from La Scala
. He was survived by his wife Silvia and two sons.
His books include Masterpieces of Greek Ceramics from the Sinopoli Collection. He died two days before receiving his Laurea in Archeology at Università La Sapienza in Rome.
Sinopoli's last recordings included Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
and Friedenstag
, as well as Dvořák
's Stabat Mater
.
On the occasion of the first edition of the Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra was formed, in collaboration with the Conservatorio “Arcangelo Corelli” of Messina. The Orchestra, made up of young talented musicians, both pupils and teachers of the Conservatorio, mostly performs works by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
conductor
Conducting
Conducting is the art of directing a musical performance by way of visible gestures. The primary duties of the conductor are to unify performers, set the tempo, execute clear preparations and beats, and to listen critically and shape the sound of the ensemble...
and composer
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...
.
Biography
Sinopoli was born in VeniceVenice
Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...
, Italy
Italy
Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
, and later studied at the Benedetto Marcello Conservatory
Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia
The Conservatorio di Musica Benedetto Marcello di Venezia is a conservatory in Venice, Italy named after composer Benedetto Marcello and established in 1876.-History:...
in Venice under Ernesto Rubin de Cervin
Ernesto Rubin de Cervin
Ernesto Rubin de Cervin Albrizzi is an Italian composer and teacher.-Biography:He was born in Venice in 1936. As a child he studied violin with Gian Francesco Malipiero, who suggested that he should start composition classes. He studied solfege with Bruno Maderna...
and at Darmstadt
Darmstadt
Darmstadt is a city in the Bundesland of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine Main Area.The sandy soils in the Darmstadt area, ill-suited for agriculture in times before industrial fertilisation, prevented any larger settlement from developing, until the city became the seat...
, including being mentored in composition with Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Another critic calls him "one of the great visionaries of 20th-century music"...
. He also obtained a degree in medicine
Medicine
Medicine is the science and art of healing. It encompasses a variety of health care practices evolved to maintain and restore health by the prevention and treatment of illness....
from the University of Padua
University of Padua
The University of Padua is a premier Italian university located in the city of Padua, Italy. The University of Padua was founded in 1222 as a school of law and was one of the most prominent universities in early modern Europe. It is among the earliest universities of the world and the second...
, and completed a dissertation on criminal anthropology
Anthropological criminology
Anthropological criminology is a field of offender profiling, based on perceived links between the nature of a crime and the personality or physical appearance of the offender...
.
Career
Sinopoli began to make a name for himself as a composer of serialSerialism
In music, serialism is a method or technique of composition that uses a series of values to manipulate different musical elements. Serialism began primarily with Arnold Schoenberg's twelve-tone technique, though his contemporaries were also working to establish serialism as one example of...
works, becoming professor of contemporary and electronic music at the Venice Conservatoire Benedetto Marcello in 1972, and a major proponent of the new movement in Venice
New Venice School
The New Venice School is a movement in contemporary music in Venice from the 1970s to the present, made up of composers directly influenced from teachings at the Venice Conservatory of the distinguished composer and pedagogue Baron Ernesto Rubin de Cervin , who studied under Luigi Dallapiccola in...
for contemporary music. He studied conducting at the Vienna Academy of Music under Hans Swarowsky
Hans Swarowsky
Hans Swarowsky was an Austrian conductor of Hungarian birth and Jewish descent.Swarowsky was born in Budapest, Hungary. He studied the art of conducting under Felix Weingartner and Richard Strauss...
; and in Venice, founded the Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna
Bruno Maderna was an Italian conductor and composer. For the last ten years of his life he lived in Germany and eventually became a citizen of that country.-Biography:...
Ensemble in the 1970s. His single most famous composition is perhaps his opera Lou Salomé, which received its first production in Munich in 1981, with Karan Armstrong
Karan Armstrong
Karan Armstrong is an American operatic soprano who has had an active international career since the 1960s.-Biography:...
in the title role.
Sinopoli was appointed principal conductor of the Philharmonia
Philharmonia
The Philharmonia Orchestra is one of the leading orchestras in Great Britain, based in London. Since 1995, it has been based in the Royal Festival Hall. In Britain it is also the resident orchestra at De Montfort Hall, Leicester and the Corn Exchange, Bedford, as well as The Anvil, Basingstoke...
in 1984, and served in this position until 1994, making a number of recordings with them, including music of Elgar
Edward Elgar
Sir Edward William Elgar, 1st Baronet OM, GCVO was an English composer, many of whose works have entered the British and international classical concert repertoire. Among his best-known compositions are orchestral works including the Enigma Variations, the Pomp and Circumstance Marches, concertos...
and the complete symphonies of Mahler
Gustav Mahler
Gustav Mahler was a late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation. He was born in the village of Kalischt, Bohemia, in what was then Austria-Hungary, now Kaliště in the Czech Republic...
. He became principal conductor of the Staatskapelle Dresden
Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden
The Sächsische Staatskapelle Dresden is an orchestra based in Dresden, Germany founded in 1548 by Kurfürst Moritz of Saxony. It is one of the world's oldest orchestras...
in 1992. He also joined the Bayreuth Festival
Bayreuth Festival
The Bayreuth Festival is a music festival held annually in Bayreuth, Germany, at which performances of operas by the 19th century German composer Richard Wagner are presented...
's roster of conductors. He is best known for his intense and sometimes controversial interpretations 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...
, especially works by Italian composers and Richard Strauss
Richard Strauss
Richard Georg Strauss was a leading German composer of the late Romantic and early modern eras. He is known for his operas, which include Der Rosenkavalier and Salome; his Lieder, especially his Four Last Songs; and his tone poems and orchestral works, such as Death and Transfiguration, Till...
. Sinopoli specialized in late-nineteenth century and early-twentieth century music, from Wagner and Verdi to Strauss, Mahler and the Second Viennese School
Second Viennese School
The Second Viennese School is the group of composers that comprised Arnold Schoenberg and his pupils and close associates in early 20th century Vienna, where he lived and taught, sporadically, between 1903 and 1925...
. His conducting was the object of much controversy, especially in the symphonic genre, with some berating the "eccentricity" of his interpretations and even doubting his conducting abilities (in Norman Lebrecht's book The Maestro Myth Lebrecht interviewed many players who performed under Sinopoli who insisted that as a conductor he was actually incompetent) while others praised the insightfulness of his often intellectual approach to works.
On 20 April 2001, Sinopoli died of a heart attack
Myocardial infarction
Myocardial infarction or acute myocardial infarction , commonly known as a heart attack, results from the interruption of blood supply to a part of the heart, causing heart cells to die...
while conducting Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Verdi
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi was an Italian Romantic composer, mainly of opera. He was one of the most influential composers of the 19th century...
's Aida
Aida
Aida sometimes spelled Aïda, is an opera in four acts by Giuseppe Verdi to an Italian libretto by Antonio Ghislanzoni, based on a scenario written by French Egyptologist Auguste Mariette...
at the Deutsche Oper
Deutsche Oper Berlin
The Deutsche Oper Berlin is an opera company located in the Charlottenburg district of Berlin, Germany. The resident building is also home to the Berlin State Ballet.-History:...
in Berlin
Berlin
Berlin is the capital city of Germany and is one of the 16 states of Germany. With a population of 3.45 million people, Berlin is Germany's largest city. It is the second most populous city proper and the seventh most populous urban area in the European Union...
. The performance was dedicated to the memory of the company's late chief director, Goetz Friedrich. Two nights later, Marcello Viotti
Marcello Viotti
Marcello Viotti was a Swiss classical music conductor, best known for opera.Viotti was born in Vallorbe, in the French-speaking region of Switzerland, to Italian parents. He studied cello, piano and singing at the Conservatory of Lausanne. Wolfgang Sawallisch was a mentor to Viotti and encouraged...
stepped in to direct Aida, and dedicated his performance to Sinopoli's memory. His funeral in Rome on 23 April was attended by the Italian President and Prime Minister, as well as a large contingent from 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...
. He was survived by his wife Silvia and two sons.
His books include Masterpieces of Greek Ceramics from the Sinopoli Collection. He died two days before receiving his Laurea in Archeology at Università La Sapienza in Rome.
Sinopoli's last recordings included Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos
Ariadne auf Naxos is an opera by Richard Strauss with a German libretto by Hugo von Hofmannsthal. Bringing together slapstick comedy and consuming beautiful music, the opera's theme is the competition between high and low art for the public's attention.- First version :The opera was originally...
and Friedenstag
Friedenstag
Friedenstag is an opera in one act by Richard Strauss, his Opus 81, to a German libretto by Joseph Gregor. Strauss had hoped to work again with Stefan Zweig on a new project after their previous collaboration of Die schweigsame Frau, but the Nazi authorities had harassed Strauss over his...
, as well as Dvořák
Antonín Dvorák
Antonín Leopold Dvořák was a Czech composer of late Romantic music, who employed the idioms of the folk music of Moravia and his native Bohemia. Dvořák’s own style is sometimes called "romantic-classicist synthesis". His works include symphonic, choral and chamber music, concerti, operas and many...
's Stabat Mater
Stabat Mater (Dvorák)
Stabat Mater for soli, choir and orchestra is a religious cantata by the Czech composer Antonín Dvořák. The work was sketched in 1876 and completed in 1877.- Background :...
.
Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival
Every October since 2005, Taormina Arte has dedicated a festival to Giuseppe Sinopoli, the artistic director of the Music section of the Taormina Festival from 1989 to 1997. The Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival does not only celebrate the man as a musician and as a conductor but also as a composer, a doctor, an archaeologist and intellectual, with a variety of events from music and literature, theatre and art to conferences, exhibitions, publications and, of course, concerts. Every year the Festival welcomes the most important orchestras in the country.On the occasion of the first edition of the Giuseppe Sinopoli Festival the Sinopoli Chamber Orchestra was formed, in collaboration with the Conservatorio “Arcangelo Corelli” of Messina. The Orchestra, made up of young talented musicians, both pupils and teachers of the Conservatorio, mostly performs works by Giuseppe Sinopoli.
External links
Interviews
- Giuseppe Sinopoli interview by Bruce Duffie