Giovanni Paisiello - composer

Audience favourite with a jealous streak

Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most
popular Italian composers in the 18th century

The composer Giovanni Paisiello, who wrote more than 90 operas and much other music and was enormously popular in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1740 in Taranto.

Paisiello was talented, versatile and had a big influence on other composers of his day and later, yet he was jealous of the success of rivals and is remembered today primarily as the composer whose passionate fans wrecked the premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera Almaviva, which was based on the same French play as Paisiello’s Il barbiere di siviglia, which was regarded as his masterpiece.

Rossini’s opera would eventually be more commonly known as Il barbiere di siviglia, but not until after Paisiello had died.

Nonetheless, Paisiello’s supporters still felt Rossini was attempting to steal their favourite’s thunder and many of them infiltrated the audience at Almaviva’s opening night in Rome and disrupted the performance with constant jeers and catcalls.

History has shown that perhaps they were right to be worried: today, Rossini’s Barber of Seville is one of the world’s most popular operas, yet Paisiello’s is rarely performed.

Paisiello was educated at a Jesuit school in Taranto. His father wanted his son to become a lawyer but noted the beauty of his singing voice and enrolled him at the Conservatory of San Onofrio at Naples.

A poster advertising the premiere
of Paisiello's opera Nina

There he displayed a talent for composing too, and the quality of some intermezzi he wrote for the conservatory’s theatre led to him being invited to write his first operas, La Pupilla and Il Marchese Tulissano. These brought him instant recognition and he settled in Naples, producing a series of successful operas, popular for being simple, dramatic, and always fast moving.

He set himself up in rivalry with the established giants of the Neapolitan school, Niccolò Piccinni, Domenico Cimarosa and Pietro Guglielmi. He was known for being bitterly outspoken when one or another of the trio staged a work that received public acclaim, but he enjoyed his own triumphs, in particular with his 1767 comic opera L'ldolo cinese. 

Paisiello left Naples only when he was invited in 1776 by the Russian empress Catherine II to St. Petersburg, where he remained for eight years. It was there that he produced Il barbiere di siviglia, with a libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini, based on the play by Pierre Beaumarchais.

Il barbiere premiered in St Petersburg in 1782 and its fame spread quickly around Europe. Among those influenced by the artistry of his score and the beauty of the melodies was Mozart, whose Marriage of Figaro made its debut four years later as a sequel to Paisiello’s Barbiere.

Paisiello left Russia in 1784, initially going to Vienna before returning to Naples to enter the service of King Ferdinand IV, where he enjoyed more success, composing what many regard as his best operas, including Nina and La Molinara, the latter featuring perhaps the best-known tune that Paisiello wrote in his lifetime, the duet Nel cor più non mi sento, which inspired works by Beethoven, Paganini and many others.

Domenico Cimarosa was a target for
Paisiello's outspoken comments

His decline began after he was invited to Paris in 1802 by Napoleon, for whom he had composed a march for the funeral of General Hoche. This time his rivals were Luigi Cherubini and Etienne Méhul, towards whom he displayed similar jealousy to that he once aimed at Cimarosa, Guglielmi and Piccinni.

However, the Parisian public was unimpressed and in 1803 he obtained permission to return to Italy, citing his wife's ill health. He kept his job in Naples even after the fall of Ferdinand IV, who was replaced as king by Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, and in turn by Joachim Murat.

But by then he was beginning to lose his touch and his fortunes declined just as the power of the Bonapartes was collapsing. His wife died in 1815 and his own health failed quickly thereafter. He died in 1816 at the age of 76.

In addition to his operas, Paisiello wrote a good deal of church music and instrumental works that include symphonies, harp and piano concerti, string quartets, sonatas for harp, violin and cello.

The 20th century saw his Barbiere and La Molinara revived along with a number of other operas and instrumental pieces.

The Castello Aragonese is a landmark in Taranto

Travel tip:

Taranto, situated at the top of the inside of the ‘heel’ of Italy, where Paisiello was born, is a large city - population in excess of 200,000 - of two distinct sections, divided by a swing bridge. The bridge links the small island containing the Città Vecchia, the old city, guarded by the imposing 15th century Castello Aragonese castle, which protects an area of Greek origins which has not been overdeveloped and has an authentic atmosphere of old southern Italy.  On the southern side of the bridge is the modern, new city, full of wide boulevards and carrying a much more prosperous air.  The city is heavily industrialised with a huge steel industry and a large naval base but its National Museum contains one of the most important collections of Greek and Roman artefacts in Italy.

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio a Porta Capuana was one of the four original Naples conservatories, founded in 1588 and developed first as an orphanage. Almost one fifth of the students at the Conservatory of San Onofrio were castrati, which gave it a different identity.  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.

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Leonardo De Lorenzo – flautist

Flair for the flute led to international career

Leonardo De Lorenzo played with the
New York Philharmonic Orchestra

Leonardo De Lorenzo, a brilliant flute player who passed on his knowledge of the instrument to others through his books, was born on this day in 1875 in Viggiano in the province of Potenza.

De Lorenzo started playing the flute at the age of eight and then moved to Naples to attend the music conservatory of San Pietro a Majella.

He became an itinerant flautist until he was 16, when he moved to America, where he worked in a hotel. He returned to Italy in 1896 to do his military service in Alessandria and became a member of a military band directed by Giovanni Moranzoni, whose son was to become a famous conductor of the orchestra at the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

De Lorenzo then began a career as a flautist and toured Italy, Germany, England and South Africa, joining an orchestra in Cape Town for a while. Eventually he returned to Naples to continue his studies.

When he travelled to America again, he became first flautist of the New York Philharmonic Orchestra directed by Gustav Mahler. He was warned never to answer back to Mahler, who had a reputation for being unpleasant. Later, in his writing, he recalled that the only time he dared speak to Mahler was after his name had been misspelled in the programme as ‘de Lorenzo’ with a lower case ‘d’. He politely requested the correction saying: ‘De Lorenzo, please, Maestro.’

Gustav Mahler, who was director of the New York
Philharmonic when De Lorenzo was first flautist

He also went on to play for the New York Symphony Orchestra and for orchestras in Minneapolis, Los Angeles and Rochester.

While playing in Minneapolis, he met Maud Peterson, a pianist who frequently accompanied him, and they were later married.

De Lorenzo became professor for flute at the Eastman School of Music and on his retirement concentrated on composing music for the flute and writing about the instrument.

His compositions, Saltarella and Pizzica-pizzica are a homage to the traditional music of his native town.

In 1951 he published the book, My Complete Story of the Flute, after carrying out extensive research.

On August 29 1955 the Los Angeles Flute Club gave a concert in which they performed his compositions to celebrate his 80th birthday.

De Lorenzo died at his home in Santa Barbara in 1962 at the age of 86.

The International Flute Competition, Leonardo De Lorenzo, is held every two years in his birthplace, Viggiano.

Musicians of Viggiano, as imagined in a book in 1853

Travel Tip:

Viggiano, where De Lorenzo was born, is a town in the province of Potenza in the southern Italian region of Basilicata. It is well known for its migrant street musicians and for harp making. Many street musicians from Viggiano have gone on to play in orchestras in Europe, America and Australia. Viggiano is also home to Europe’s biggest oil field.

The Church of San Pietro a Majella in Naples

Travel tip:

San Pietro a Majella, the Naples Music Conservatory, occupies the former monastery adjoining the church of San Pietro a Majella at the western end of Via Tribunali in Naples. Formerly housed in the monastery of San Sebastiano, the Music Conservatory moved to its present location in 1826.

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Antonio Scotti - baritone

Neapolitan singer who played 35 seasons at the Met

Antonio Scotti in his most famous role as
Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca

The operatic baritone Antonio Scotti, who performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York for a remarkable 35 consecutive seasons, was born on this day in 1866 in Naples.

Scotti's career coincided with those of many fine baritones and experts did not consider his voice to be among the richest. Yet what he lacked in timbre, he compensated for in musicality, acting ability and an instinctive grasp of dramatic timing.

Later in his career, he excelled in roles that emerged from the verismo movement in opera in the late 19th century, of which the composer Giacomo Puccini was a leading proponent, drawing on themes from real life and creating characters more identifiable with real people.

For a while, Scotti's portrayal of the chief of police Baron Scarpia in Puccini's Tosca, for example, was the yardstick against which all performances were measured, at least until Tito Gobbi's emergence in the 1930s.  Indeed, in 1924 the Met chose a gala presentation of Tosca as a fitting way for Scotti to mark the 25th anniversary of his debut there.

Scotti's parents in Naples were keen for him to enter the priesthood but he chose to pursue his ambitions in music. He received his first serious training at the Naples Conservatory under Esther Trifari-Paganini and Vincenzo Lombardi, who was the vocal coach employed by Enrico Caruso.

Most accounts of Scotti's career say he made his debut in Malta in 1889 in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida but some suggest he had already performed in public at the Circolo Filarmonico in Naples in Gaspare Spontini's La vestale.  What is agreed is that audiences and critics were impressed by the young baritone and he was soon being booked to appear elsewhere, not only in Italy but in Spain and Portugal, Russia and South America.

Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where Scotti made his debut
in 1898 in Richard Wagner's Der Meistersinger

His status as a singer destined for an illustrious career was confirmed when he made his debut at La Scala in Milan in 1898 in the role of Hans Sachs in Richard Wagner's Der Meistersinger, under the baton of Arturo Toscanini.

He performed at Covent Garden in London for the first time in 1899 as Don Giovanni in Mozart's opera of the same name, in which he also made his New York debut in the same year.  He would return to Covent Garden almost every year until the outbreak of war in 1914.

Scotti's association with Baron Scarpia in Tosca began in 1901, when he became the first artist to sing the role in America.  He would go on to perform the role a further 216 times, playing opposite 15 different Toscas, including the beautiful American soprano Geraldine Farrar, with whom he was said to be infatuated.

Farrar had an affair with Toscanini and was rumoured to be involved romantically also with Caruso, who became Scotti's close friend, their careers at the Met running parallel.  Scotti was Rigoletto to Caruso's Duke of Mantua when the latter made his debut at the house in Verdi's opera in 1903 and they would share the stage on many occasions.

A dapper Antonio Scotti pictured in New
York in 1915 at the height of his fame

By the time he retired, Scotti had clocked up more than 1,200 performances with the Metropolitan Opera House Company, either in New York or on tour.  Among his other notable roles, he was Puccini's Marcello in La bohème and Sharpless in Madame Butterfly, each on more than 100 occasions.

From 1919 he also toured with his own troupe of singers, under the name of the Scotti Opera Company, although the venture was not a financial success.

His final Met appearance came in January 1933, shortly before his 67th birthday, when he sang Chim-Fen in Franco Leoni's one-act opera L'Oracolo, a role he had premiered at Covent Garden in 1905 and which he played in New York several times.  Despite a voice that was by then beginning to fail, a dynamic performance was still hailed as a fitting send-off.

Scotti made a number of recordings, including several duets with Caruso, Farrar and with the Polish coloratura soprano, Marcella Sembrich, although he did not enjoy the commercial success that came the way of Caruso.

He returned to Naples, intending to enjoy retirement in the city of his birth, but had not been able to turn his years of celebrity in New York into financial security and after three years in reduced circumstances, relying on money he was sent occasionally by sympathetic friends and fans in the United States, he died in hospital in 1936 from arterial disease.

Travel tip:

Milan's famous opera house, Teatro alla Scala - popularly known as La Scala - came into being in 1778.  It was at first called the Nuovo Regio Ducale Teatro alla Scala, having been commissioned by the Empress Maria Theresa of the House of Hapsburg, of which the Duchy of Milan was at the time a part, as replacement for the Teatro Regio Ducale following a fire in 1776.  It was built on the site of the former church of Santa Maria alla Scala.  As with many theatres of the time, La Scala was also a casino, and opera-goers in the early days had to contend with the distraction of gambling activities taking place at the same time as the cast were performing on the stage.

The Naples Music Conservatory is next to the
Church of San Pietro a Majella 

Travel tip:

The Naples Music Conservatory occupies the former monastery adjoining the church of San Pietro a Majella at the western end of Via dei Tribunali, one of the three parallel streets running from east to west that mark the grid of the historic centre of the city, one of which - Via San Biagio dei Librai - is more commonly known as Spaccanapoli.  Formerly housed in the monastery of San Sebastiano, on the eastern side of Piazza Dante, the Conservatory moved to its present location in 1826.

More reading:

The brilliant career of the great tenor Enrico Caruso

Giacomo Puccini - the musical genius who took the baton from Verdi

How Tito Gobbi found fame on both stage and screen

Also on this day:

1348: Devastating earthquake hits Friuli Venezia Giulia

(Picture credit: Church of San Pietro a Majella by Armando Mancini; via Wikimedia Commons)

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