Isidore de Lara
Encyclopedia
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
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...
and singer. After studying in 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 France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
, he returned to England where he taught for several years at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama
Guildhall School of Music and Drama is an independent music and dramatic arts school which was founded in 1880 in London, England. Students can pursue courses in Music, Opera, Drama and Technical Theatre Arts.-History:...
and became a well known singer and composer of art songs. In the early 1880s he began to compose music for the stage, eventually achieving his greatest successes with opera in Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo
Monte Carlo is an administrative area of the Principality of Monaco....
from the late 1890s through the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
. His most popular opera, Messaline
Messaline
Messaline is an operatic tragédie lyrique in four acts by Isidore de Lara. The librettists were Paul Armand Silvestre and Eugène Morand.The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 21 March 1899 where it was received enthusiastically...
(1899), enjoyed frequent revivals throughout Europe
Europe
Europe is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
and in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
during the first quarter of the 20th century. He returned to London
London
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
and spent much of the 1920s trying to create a permanent National opera company in England without much success.
Biography
Born in LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, de Lara went to Milan
Milan
Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...
in 1874 to study composition with Alberto Mazzucato
Alberto Mazzucato
Alberto Mazzucato was an Italian composer, music teacher, and writer.Mazzucato was born in Udine. Trained at the Padua Conservatory, he composed eight operas between 1834 and 1843, of which his most successful was Esmeralda...
and singing with Francesco Lamperti
Francesco Lamperti
Francesco Lamperti was an Italian singing teacher.A native of Savona, Lamperti attended the Milan Conservatory where, beginning in 1850, he taught for a quarter of a century. He was director at the Teatro Filodrammatico in Lodi. In 1875 he left the school and began to teach as a private tutor...
at the Milan Conservatory
Milan Conservatory
The Milan Conservatory is a college of music which was established by a royal decree of 1807 in Milan, capital of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy. It opened the following year with premises in the cloisters of the Baroque church of Santa Maria della Passione. There were initially 18 boarders,...
. In 1876 he went to Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
to study with Édouard Lalo
Édouard Lalo
Édouard-Victoire-Antoine Lalo was a French composer.-Biography:Lalo was born in Lille , in northernmost France. He attended that city's music conservatory in his youth. Then, beginning at age 16, Lalo studied at the Paris Conservatoire under Berlioz's old enemy François Antoine Habeneck...
. The following year he returned to London to take a position as a professor of singing
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He became known as a concert singer and a writer of vocal songs, of which his The Garden of Sleep (1877) and After Silent Years (1887) were particularly popular.
In the early 1880s, de Lara began to switch his attention to composing music for the theatre. 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...
, The Royal Word, premiered at the Gaiety Theatre, London
Gaiety Theatre, London
The Gaiety Theatre, London was a West End theatre in London, located on Aldwych at the eastern end of the Strand. The theatre was established as the Strand Musick Hall , in 1864 on the former site of the Lyceum Theatre. It was rebuilt several times, but closed from the beginning of World War II...
on 17 April 1883 with de Lara portraying the role of Charles II of England
Charles II of England
Charles II was monarch of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland, and Ireland.Charles II's father, King Charles I, was executed at Whitehall on 30 January 1649, at the climax of the English Civil War...
. This was soon followed by Wrong Notes (1883) and Minna, or The Fall from the Cliff (1886). A few years later the acclaimed French baritone Victor Maurel
Victor Maurel
Victor Maurel was a French operatic baritone who enjoyed an international reputation as a great singing-actor.-Biography:...
persuaded him to turn his cantata
Cantata
A cantata is a vocal composition with an instrumental accompaniment, typically in several movements, often involving a choir....
The Light of Asia, based on the life of Buddha
Gautama Buddha
Siddhārtha Gautama was a spiritual teacher from the Indian subcontinent, on whose teachings Buddhism was founded. In most Buddhist traditions, he is regarded as the Supreme Buddha Siddhārtha Gautama (Sanskrit: सिद्धार्थ गौतम; Pali: Siddhattha Gotama) was a spiritual teacher from the Indian...
, into an Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
opera, La luce dell'Asia, which was produced at Covent Garden
Royal Opera House
The Royal Opera House is an opera house and major performing arts venue in Covent Garden, central London. The large building is often referred to as simply "Covent Garden", after a previous use of the site of the opera house's original construction in 1732. It is the home of The Royal Opera, The...
in 1892.
In 1893 de Lara's opera Amy Robsart was given in French
French language
French is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
at Covent Garden. Well received, the work was staged the following year at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo
Opéra de Monte-Carlo
The Opéra de Monte-Carlo is an opera house located in the principality of Monaco.With the lack of cultural diversions available in Monaco in the 1870s, Prince Charles III, along with the Société des Bains de Mer, decided on the construction of an opera house. Initially, it was Charles III's...
. While in Monte Carlo, De Lara met Princess Alice of Monaco
Alice Heine
Alice Heine , styled HSH The Princess of Monaco, and also The Duchess of Richelieu, was the American-born second wife of Prince Albert I of Monaco, a great-grandfather of Prince Rainier III of Monaco. Marcel Proust used her as a model for the Princesse de Luxembourg in In Search of Lost Time...
who became a close friend and patron. Under her support, De Lara remained in Monaco
Monaco
Monaco , officially the Principality of Monaco , is a sovereign city state on the French Riviera. It is bordered on three sides by its neighbour, France, and its centre is about from Italy. Its area is with a population of 35,986 as of 2011 and is the most densely populated country in the...
and moved into the most successful part of his career. His opera Moïna was produced there in 1897. It was followed in 1899 by his most famous work, Messaline
Messaline
Messaline is an operatic tragédie lyrique in four acts by Isidore de Lara. The librettists were Paul Armand Silvestre and Eugène Morand.The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 21 March 1899 where it was received enthusiastically...
, which featured the presence of the greatest Italian heroic tenor of the era, Francesco Tamagno
Francesco Tamagno
Francesco Tamagno was an operatic tenor from Italy who sang with enormous success throughout Europe and America. On 5 February 1887, he cemented his place in musical history by creating the role of Otello in Giuseppe Verdi's masterpiece of the same name...
, in the cast of the premiere performance. Messaline proved very popular and was the inspiration for Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa or simply Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman, and illustrator, whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of fin de siècle Paris yielded an œuvre of exciting, elegant and provocative images of the modern...
's painting of the same name. Notably, it was the first opera by an English composer to be mounted 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...
(in 1901).
With the outbreak of World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, de Lara returned to London. Concerned for the survival of the arts during this time, he established a fund for the relief of distressed musicians. At the close of the war, he strove to establish an English national opera throughout the 1920s, but was unable to get the financial support needed to maintain a permanent company. He retired to Paris where he died on 2 August 1935.
Works
De Lara was a moderately prolific composer, producing a total of 13 operas, 67 vocal art songs, and a small amount of chamber musicChamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music, written for a small group of instruments which traditionally could be accommodated in a palace chamber. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small number of performers with one performer to a part...
. His musical style was highly eclectic, although the influences of Jules Massenet
Jules Massenet
Jules Émile Frédéric Massenet was a French composer best known for his operas. His compositions were very popular in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and he ranks as one of the greatest melodists of his era. Soon after his death, Massenet's style went out of fashion, and many of his operas...
and Camille Saint-Saëns
Camille Saint-Saëns
Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was a French Late-Romantic composer, organist, conductor, and pianist. He is known especially for The Carnival of the Animals, Danse macabre, Samson and Delilah, Piano Concerto No. 2, Cello Concerto No. 1, Havanaise, Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso, and his Symphony...
are readily apparent within his operas. Musicologist Nigel Burton wrote, "His style may be said to have developed, but it never really settled down." The somewhat erratic side to his writing was a weakness and a strength. The fluctuating musical vocabulary in his writing enabled him to create any attitude, emotion, or impression at a moment’s notice, but at times the musical effects seem out of place or without cause; a criticism also made of Meyerbeer. Critics have also commented on de Lara's tendency towards over sentimentality. As one critic said, "at the moments when the music should attempt to rise to dramatic greatness, it degenerates into synthetic posturings." However, de Lara by all accounts had a wonderful musical ear and at his best he is a fine composer. Perhaps de Lara's strongest area was his skill at orchestration
Orchestration
Orchestration is the study or practice of writing music for an orchestra or of adapting for orchestra music composed for another medium...
which was both tasteful and highly creative at the same time.
Selected operas
- The Royal Word (1883)
- Wrong Notes (1883)
- Minna, or The Fall from the Cliff (1886)
- La luce dell'Asia (The Light of Asia) (1892, Covent Garden)
- Amy Robsart (1893, Covent Garden)
- Moïna (1897, Monte Carlo)
- MessalineMessalineMessaline is an operatic tragédie lyrique in four acts by Isidore de Lara. The librettists were Paul Armand Silvestre and Eugène Morand.The opera premiered at the Opéra de Monte-Carlo on 21 March 1899 where it was received enthusiastically...
(1899, Monte Carlo) - Soléa (1907)
- Naïl (abt. 1910)
- Les trois mousquetaires (abt. 1920)