Francesco Durante – composer and teacher

Musician devoted his life to passing on his composing skills to others

Francesco Durante numbered many famous
pupils when he taught in Naples

An esteemed composer of religious and instrumental music, Francesco Durante was born on this day in 1684 at Frattamaggiore near Naples.

Durante was a highly regarded teacher at the Sant'Onofrio Conservatorio and the Santa Maria di Loreto Conservatorio and was also Chapelmaster at the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesú Cristo in Naples.

He had some famous pupils, among whom were Niccoló Jommelli, Niccoló Piccinni and Giovanni Battista Pergolesi, who became leading composers of the Neapolitan School of 18th century opera.

Durante studied music in Rome and at Naples, where he was a pupil at San Onofrio and is believed to have studied under Alessandro Scarlatti. He began his own teaching career at the Sant'Onofrio Conservatorio in 1710.

Between 1728 and 1742 he also taught at Santa Maria Loreto and the Conservatorio dei Poveri di Gesú Cristo.  He succeeded Leonardo Leo as principal teacher at Sant'Onofrio Conservatorio in 1745.

There was always rivalry between Leo’s students and his own pupils, who at various times included the composers Giovanni Paisiello, Tommaso Traetta and Leonardo Vinci.

Durante’s own compositions included motets, masses, requiems and oratorios. A pastoral mass for four voices and a setting of the Lamentations of Jeremiah are considered among his best works. He also composed for the harpsichord and for stringed instruments.

A collection of his works was presented to the Bibliothèque National in Paris by a Neapolitan collector of art and music and the Imperial library in Vienna also houses a collection of his manuscripts. He seems to have composed mainly sacred works and is considered by experts to have been one of the best composers of church music of his period.

Durante, who was married three times, died in Naples in 1755, aged 71.

The Piazza Umberto I in Frattamaggiore, with the
campanile of the Basilica of San Sossio 

Travel tip:

Frattamaggiore, where Durante was born, is a comune of Naples, about 15km (9 miles) north of the city, and 15 km southwest of Caserta. Known as Fratta to the locals, Frattamaggiore was named a Benedictine city in 1997 and was awarded the title of City of Art in 2008. It is thought to date back to before Roman times, but the first recorded mention of Frattamaggiore was in 921 AD. The patron saint of Frattamaggiore is Saint Sossius, or Sosius. His remains were first preserved at Miseno, but after the town was destroyed by the Saracens his followers moved to live in Frattamaggiore. The saint’s relics were recovered by Benedictines and preserved in a convent in Naples, but after the convent was suppressed during Napoleonic times, his relics were transferred to Frattamaggiore where they are preserved in a basilica dedicated to him.

The entrance to the Sant'Onofrio
Conservatory at Porta Capuana

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio at Porta Capuana, where Durante taught at the beginning and end of his career, was one of the four original Naples music conservatories. Founded in 1588, it was developed first as an orphanage. Almost one fifth of the students at the Conservatorio di Sant'onofrio were castrati. Its popularity declined during the Napoleonic period, and only 30 students remained when the conservatory merged with that of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1797. Porta Capuana is now a free-standing gateway that was once part of the Aragonese walls of the city and is situated between the city’s main railway station and the Duomo. The Conservatorio di Sant'onofrio, which was in time absorbed into the Naples Conservatory, used to be close to the Castel Capuano, which was originally a 12th century fortress but has been modified several times. Until recently, the castle was home to the city’s Hall of Justice, also known as the Vicaria, which housed legal offices and a prison.

More reading:

The opera buffa genius of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi

Why Domenico Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto is seen as one of the greatest comic operas

First night at Teatro di San Carlo

Also on this day: 

1425: The birth of Bianca Maria Visconti, Duchess of Milan

1675: The birth of Pope Benedict XIV

1941: The birth of cartoonist Franco Bonvicini

1958: The birth of crime writer Maurizio De Giovanni

1996: The death of car designer Dante Giacosa

(Picture credits: conservatory gate by Baku; via Wikimedia Commons)

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Giovanni Battista Pergolesi – composer

Brief career of 'opera buffa' genius

A portrait of Pergolesi presented to the Naples
Conservatory by his brother, Florimo

Opera composer Giovanni Battista Pergolesi was born on this day in 1710 as Giovanni Battista Draghi, in Jesi, in what is now the province of Ancona.

He later acquired the name Pergolesi, the Italian word for the residents of Pergola in Marche, which had been the birthplace of his ancestors.

Pergolesi was the most important early composer of opera buffa - comic opera. He wrote a two-act buffa intermezzo for one of his serious operas, which later became a popular work in its own right.

He also wrote sacred music and his Stabat Mater, composed in 1736, has been used in the soundtracks of many contemporary films.

Pergolesi received a musical education at the Conservatorio dei Poveri in Naples where he gained a good reputation as a violinist.

Watch a complete performance of Pergolesi's Stabat Mater

In 1732 he was appointed maestro di cappella to the Prince of Stigliano in Naples and produced for him an opera buffa, Lo frate ‘nnammorato, and a sacred work, believed to be his Mass in D, which were both well received.

The following year his serious opera, Il prigionier superbo, was produced but it was the comic intermezzo, La serva padrona, inserted between the acts, that was most popular, revealing his gift for comic characterisation.

A poster advertising a performance of Pergolesi's
 intermezzo La Serva Padrona in 1739

In 1734 Pergolesi went to Rome to direct the performance of his Mass in F.

After that his health began to fail and he went to live in the Franciscan monastery at Pozzuoli, near Naples, where he finished his last work, the celebrated Stabat Mater, which demonstrated his ability to handle large, choral and instrumental forces.

He died in extreme poverty at the age of 26 and was buried in the Cathedral at Pozzuoli.

When Pergolesi died, his fame had scarcely spread beyond Rome and Naples, but later in the century it grew enormously. The success of La serva padrona was mainly posthumous and it reached its peak after it was performed in Paris in 1752.

It led to the so called ‘guerre des bouffons’ - the war of the buffoons - which divided the supporters of serious opera and the supporters of the new Italian comic opera, with Pergolesi held up as a model of the Italian style. Musical forgers produced works claiming to be by Pergolesi, and a number of works originally attributed to him have since been shown to be by other composers.

Jesi's Teatro Pergolesi was named in honour of the composer

Pergolesi was the subject of a 1932 Italian film, Pergolesi , directed by Guido Brignone with Elio Steiner playing the role of the composer.

His Stabat Mater was used in the films, Farinelli, Jesus of Montreal, Smilla’s Sense of Snow, Amadeus, The Mirror, Cactus and a 2016 documentary, Nothing Left Unsaid, which was about Gloria Vanderbilt and Anderson Cooper.

Pergolesi was honoured in his home town of Jesi in the 19th century when the Teatro della Concordia was renamed Teatro Pergolesi.

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio dei Poveri in Naples, where Pergolesi studied, was founded in 1589 by Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan monk. It was adjacent to the Baroque Church of Santa Maria della Colonna in Via dei Tribunali. It was converted into a religious educational institution in 1743.

The Baroque church of Santa Maria
della Colonna in Naples

Travel tip:

Pozzuoli is a comune of Naples in the region of Campania, lying in the centre of an area of volcanic activity. In the 1980s the city experienced hundreds of tremors and the sea bottom was raised by almost two metres, making the Bay of Pozzuoli too shallow for large craft. After Pergolesi died in poverty in Pozzuoli, his body was placed in an unmarked mass grave in the Cathedral.

More reading:

Why Domenico Cimarosa's Il Matrimonio Segreto is regarded as one of the greatest comic operas

The opening of Teatro San Carlo in Naples in 1737

Jacopo Peri - the 'inventor' of the opera

Also on this day:

1975: Death of writer Carlo Levi

(Picture credits: Teatro Pergolesi by Gaspa; church of Santa Maria della Colonna by Miguel Hermoso Cuesta)



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