Riccardo Zandonai
Encyclopedia
Riccardo Zandonai was an Italian
composer
.
, then part of Austria–Hungary.
As a young man, he showed such aptness in his musical studies that he entered the Pesaro
Conservatorio in 1899 and completed his studies in 1902; he completed the nine-year curriculum in only three years. Among his teachers was Pietro Mascagni
, who regarded him highly.
During this period he composed the Inno degli studenti trentini, that is, the anthem of the organised irredentist youth of his native province. His essay for graduation was an opera named Il ritorno di Odisseo (The Return of Ulysses), based on a poem by Giovanni Pascoli
, for singers, choir and orchestra. The same year 1902 he put to music another Pascoli poem, Il sogno di Rosetta. In 1908, in Milan
, he was heard by Arrigo Boito
at a soirée, and Boito introduced him to Giulio Ricordi
, one of the dominating figures in Italian musical publishing at the time.
Zandonai's fame rests largely on his opera Francesca da Rimini
, a free adaptation of a tragedy
which Gabriele d'Annunzio
had written expanding a passage from Dante
's Inferno; it has never fallen entirely from the repertoire, and has been recorded several times. A while after the première, he married soprano Tarquinia Tarquini
, for whom he had created the role of Conchita
in the eponymous opera (dealing with a topic that Puccini
had first considered and then rejected).
Soon, however, war broke out; patriotic Zandonai in 1916 composed a song, Alla Patria ("For the Motherland"), dedicated to Italy
, with the result that his home and belongings in Sacco (then still in Austro–Hungarian hands) were confiscated (he received them back after the war).
When Puccini died without completing the music for the last act of Turandot
, Zandonai was among several composers the Ricordi publishing firm considered for the task of finishing it. Puccini himself, in his final illness, seems to have supported the choice of Zandonai —certainly Toscanini
looked with approval on this choice— but his son Tonio Puccini, for reasons still obscure, vetoed it. Ultimately Franco Alfano
was chosen to complete Turandot.
In 1935 Zandonai became the director of the Rossini Conservatory
in his beloved Pesaro. There he revived some works of Rossini, such as Il viaggio a Reims
and the overture for Maometto secondo
. In 1941 he re-orchestrated —and reduced to three acts— La gazza ladra
.
Three years later, he died in Trebbiantico, Pesaro
, after undergoing gallstone
surgery. His last words were for the priest who announced to him that the day before, Rome
had been liberated. The dying composer said, in his native dialect: "Good! Viva l'Italia; the sound part".
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...
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
Zandonai was born in Borgo Sacco, RoveretoRovereto
Rovereto is a city and comune in Trentino in northern Italy, located in the Vallagarina valley of the Adige River.-History:Rovereto was an ancient fortress town standing at the frontier between the bishopric of Trento - an independent state until 1797 - and the republic of Venice, and later...
, then part of Austria–Hungary.
As a young man, he showed such aptness in his musical studies that he entered the Pesaro
Pesaro
Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206....
Conservatorio in 1899 and completed his studies in 1902; he completed the nine-year curriculum in only three years. Among his teachers was 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...
, who regarded him highly.
During this period he composed the Inno degli studenti trentini, that is, the anthem of the organised irredentist youth of his native province. His essay for graduation was an opera named Il ritorno di Odisseo (The Return of Ulysses), based on a poem by Giovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Pascoli
Giovanni Placido Agostino Pascoli was an Italian poet and classical scholar.- Biography :Giovanni Pascoli was born at San Mauro di Romagna , into a well-to-do family. He was the fourth of ten children of Ruggero Pascoli and Caterina Vincenzi Alloccatelli...
, for singers, choir and orchestra. The same year 1902 he put to music another Pascoli poem, Il sogno di Rosetta. In 1908, in 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 ,...
, he was heard by 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...
at a soirée, and Boito introduced him to Giulio Ricordi
Giulio Ricordi
Giulio Ricordi was an Italian editor and musician.-Biography:Ricordi was born in Milan, where he also died....
, one of the dominating figures in Italian musical publishing at the time.
Zandonai's fame rests largely on his opera Francesca da Rimini
Francesca da Rimini (Zandonai)
Francesca da Rimini is an opera in four acts, composed by Riccardo Zandonai, with libretto by Tito Ricordi, , after a play by Gabriele D'Annunzio. It was premiered at the Teatro Regio in Turin on February 19, 1914, and is still staged occasionally.This opera is Zandonai's best-known work...
, a free adaptation of a tragedy
Tragedy
Tragedy is a form of art based on human suffering that offers its audience pleasure. While most cultures have developed forms that provoke this paradoxical response, tragedy refers to a specific tradition of drama that has played a unique and important role historically in the self-definition of...
which Gabriele d'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio
Gabriele D'Annunzio or d'Annunzio was an Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist...
had written expanding a passage from Dante
Dante Alighieri
Durante degli Alighieri, mononymously referred to as Dante , was an Italian poet, prose writer, literary theorist, moral philosopher, and political thinker. He is best known for the monumental epic poem La commedia, later named La divina commedia ...
's Inferno; it has never fallen entirely from the repertoire, and has been recorded several times. A while after the première, he married soprano Tarquinia Tarquini
Tarquinia Tarquini
Tarquinia Tarquini was an Italian dramatic soprano and the wife of composer Riccardo Zandonai. Born in Colle di Val d'Elsa, Tarquini studied singing at the Milan Conservatory and privately in Florence...
, for whom he had created the role of Conchita
Conchita (opera)
Conchita is an opera in four acts and six scenes by composer Riccardo Zandonai. The work uses an Italian language libretto by Maurizio Vaucaire and Carlo Zangarini which is based on Pierre Louÿs's 1898 novel La femme et le pantin...
in the eponymous opera (dealing with a topic that 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...
had first considered and then rejected).
Soon, however, war broke out; patriotic Zandonai in 1916 composed a song, Alla Patria ("For the Motherland"), dedicated to 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...
, with the result that his home and belongings in Sacco (then still in Austro–Hungarian hands) were confiscated (he received them back after the war).
When Puccini died without completing the music for the last act of Turandot
Turandot
Turandot is an opera in three acts by Giacomo Puccini, set to a libretto in Italian by Giuseppe Adami and Renato Simoni.Though Puccini's first interest in the subject was based on his reading of Friedrich Schiller's adaptation of the play, his work is most nearly based on the earlier text Turandot...
, Zandonai was among several composers the Ricordi publishing firm considered for the task of finishing it. Puccini himself, in his final illness, seems to have supported the choice of Zandonai —certainly Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini
Arturo Toscanini was an Italian conductor. One of the most acclaimed musicians of the late 19th and 20th century, he was renowned for his intensity, his perfectionism, his ear for orchestral detail and sonority, and his photographic memory...
looked with approval on this choice— but his son Tonio Puccini, for reasons still obscure, vetoed it. Ultimately Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano
Franco Alfano was an Italian composer and pianist. Best known today for his opera Risurrezione and above all for having completed Puccini's opera Turandot in 1926. He had considerable success with several of his own works during his lifetime.- Biography :He was born in Posillipo, Naples...
was chosen to complete Turandot.
In 1935 Zandonai became the director of the Rossini Conservatory
Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini"
The Conservatorio Statale di Musica "Gioachino Rossini" is a music conservatory in Pesaro, Italy. Founded in 1869 with a legacy from the composer Gioachino Rossini, the conservatory officially opened in 1882 with 67 students and was then known as the Liceo musicale Rossini...
in his beloved Pesaro. There he revived some works of Rossini, such as Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims
Il viaggio a Reims, ossia L'albergo del giglio d'oro is an operatic dramma giocoso, originally performed in three acts, by Gioachino Rossini to an Italian libretto by Luigi Balocchi, based in part on Corinne, ou L'Italie by Mme de Staël.Rossini's last opera in the Italian language Il viaggio a...
and the overture for Maometto secondo
Maometto II
Maometto II is an opera in two acts by Gioachino Rossini, to an Italian libretto by Cesare della Valle, set in the 1470s during the time of the war between the Turks and Venetians. Della Valle based his libretto on his earlier play Anna Erizo...
. In 1941 he re-orchestrated —and reduced to three acts— La gazza ladra
La gazza ladra
La gazza ladra is a melodramma or opera semiseria in two acts by Gioachino Rossini. The libretto was by Giovanni Gherardini after La pie voleuse by JMT Badouin d'Aubigny and Louis-Charles Caigniez....
.
Three years later, he died in Trebbiantico, Pesaro
Pesaro
Pesaro is a town and comune in the Italian region of the Marche, capital of the Pesaro e Urbino province, on the Adriatic. According to the 2007 census, its population was 92,206....
, after undergoing gallstone
Gallstone
A gallstone is a crystalline concretion formed within the gallbladder by accretion of bile components. These calculi are formed in the gallbladder, but may pass distally into other parts of the biliary tract such as the cystic duct, common bile duct, pancreatic duct, or the ampulla of...
surgery. His last words were for the priest who announced to him that the day before, Rome
Rome
Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...
had been liberated. The dying composer said, in his native dialect: "Good! Viva l'Italia; the sound part".
Sacred
- Te Deum for male choir and organ (1906)
- Two samplers of Melodie per canto e piano (1907, 1913)
- O Padre nostro che nei cieli stai for choir, organ and orchestra (1912)
- Messa da Requiem for choir (1914)
- Recently a Missa pro defunctis was discovered.
Other
Various symphonic compositions:- "Primavera in Val di Sole"
- "Autunno fra i monti"
- "Ballata eroica"
- "Fra gli alberghi delle DolomitiDolomitesThe Dolomites are a mountain range located in north-eastern Italy. It is a part of Southern Limestone Alps and extends from the River Adige in the west to the Piave Valley in the east. The northern and southern borders are defined by the Puster Valley and the Sugana Valley...
" - "Quadri di SegantiniGiovanni SegantiniGiovanni Segantini was an Italian painter known for his large pastoral landscapes of the Alps. He was one of the most famous artists in Europe in the late 19th century, and his paintings were collected by major museums. In later life he combined a Divisionist painting style with Symbolist images...
" - "Rapsodia trentina"
- "Colombina"
- Concerto romantico for violinViolinThe violin is a string instrument, usually with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is the smallest, highest-pitched member of the violin family of string instruments, which includes the viola and cello....
- Concerto andaluso for celloCelloThe cello is a bowed string instrument with four strings tuned in perfect fifths. It is a member of the violin family of musical instruments, which also includes the violin, viola, and double bass. Old forms of the instrument in the Baroque era are baryton and viol .A person who plays a cello is...
- In 1936 he composed the soundtrackSoundtrackA soundtrack can be recorded music accompanying and synchronized to the images of a motion picture, book, television program or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrack of a film or TV show; or the physical area of a film that contains the...
for the French film Tarakánowa, by Feodor Ozep.
Further reading
- K. C. Dryden, Riccardo Zandonai: A Biography (Peter Lang Publishing, Berlin, 1999), ISBN 0820436496