Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli - composer

Neapolitan who snubbed Napoleon wrote 37 operas

Niccolò Zingarelli was one of the most
successful composers of his time

The composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli, who wrote 37 mainly comic operas and more than 500 pieces of sacred music, was born on this day in 1752 in Naples.

His success made him one of the principal composers of opera and religious music of his time. At various points in his career, he was maestro di cappella - music director - at Milan Cathedral, choir master at the Sistine Chapel and director of the Naples Conservatory.

Many of Zingarelli’s operas were written for Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Early in his career he worked in Paris, which held him in good stead later when he was arrested after refusing to conduct a hymn for the newly-born son of the Emperor Napoleon, who at the time was the self-proclaimed King of Italy.

Sometimes known as Nicola, the young Zingarelli studied from the age of seven at the Conservatorio di Santa Maria di Loreto, which was the original conservatory of Naples, dating back to 1537. He was tutored by Fedele Fenaroli, whose pupils also included Domenico Cimarosa and, later, Giuseppe Verdi, and also by Alessandro Speranza.

As a young man, Zingarelli earned a living as a violinist, while also composing. His first opera, Montezuma, was successfully produced at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples in 1781. Four years later Alsinda was staged at La Scala, the first of a series of his operas produced there until 1803.

Zingarelli refused to conduct a service for
Napoleon's new son at the Sistine Chapel

In 1789, he was invited to Paris to compose Antigone to a libretto by Jean-François Marmontel for the Opéra. He might have stayed longer in Paris had the French Revolution not driven him to Switzerland.

From there he returned to Milan, where in 1793 he became music director at the Duomo.

A year later, Zingarelli moved again, to take up the post of maestro di cappella at the Basilica della Santa Casa in Loreto, in Marche, an important and prestigious position at the time. He stayed there for 10 years, composing a large number of sacred works, at the same time continuing to write operas for La Scala and other theatres.

When he left Loreto, it was to become music director and choir master at the Sistine Chapel in Rome, where he composed cantatas on poems by Torquato Tasso and Dante.

It was in Rome that he wrote Berenice (1811), an opera that achieved great popularity, although two operas he composed for La Scala, Il mercato di Monfregoso (1792), based on a play by Carlo Goldoni, and Giulietta e Romeo (1796), inspired by William Shakespeare’s play, are said to be his finest work.

It was in 1811 that he was asked to conduct a Te Deum - a short religious service, held to bless an event or give thanks, which is based on the Latin hymn of the same name - for Napoleon, to celebrate the emperor’s new-born son.  As an Italian patriot, however, he felt he could not and, as a consequence of his public refusal, was arrested.

As it happened, though, Napoleon was a fan of his music and not only allowed Zingarelli to go free, he also awarded him a state pension.

In 1813, he left Rome to return to Naples, where he became director of the Conservatorio di San Sebastiano, before moving to the current site, the Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella, in 1826. By then, he had also replaced Giovanni Paisiello as choir master of Naples Cathedral, a position he held until his death, in 1837, in Torre del Greco, just along the coast.

The huge Basilica della Santa Casa sits at the highest point
of Loreto and therefore dominates the skyline

Travel tip:

The hill town of Loreto, about 5km (3 miles) inland from the Adriatic coast about 25km (16 miles) south of Ancona and a similar distance north of Civitanova Marche, is easily identified from a distance away by the dome of the basilica, which stands taller than anything else in the area. The Basilica della Santa Casa takes its name from the rustic stone cottage that once occupied its site - and indeed is preserved inside the structure of the cathedral - which was said to be the place of refuge to which angels brought the Madonna as a safe haven after the Saracens who had invaded the Holy Land. The beautiful basilica itself is a late Gothic structure upon which Giuliano da Maiano, Giuliano da Sangallo and Donato Bramante all worked at different times. Inside, there are artworks by Luca Signorelli and Lorenzo Lotto, who died there in 1556.

Torre del Greco was once a thriving upmarket seaside
resort, as depicted in this late 19th century postcard

Travel tip:

Torre del Greco was once part of Magna Graecia – Great Greece – in the eighth and seventh centuries BC but its name is thought to originated in the 11th century AD when a Greek hermit was said to have occupied an eight-sided coastal watch tower called Turris Octava. From the 16th century it became popular with wealthy families and even Italian nobility, who built elaborate summer palaces there. The area is largely run down these days but in the 19th century and early 20th century Torre del Greco enjoyed its peak years as a resort to which wealthy Italians flocked, both to enjoy the sea air and as a point from which to scale Vesuvius via a funicular railway. A thriving café scene developed, and the art nouveau Gran Caffè Palumbo became famous across the country.  Since the 17th century it has been a major producer of coral jewellery.

More reading:

Why Carlo Goldoni is seen as the greatest Venetian dramatist

The story of the troubled Renaissance poet Torquato Tasso

How Domenico Cimarosa developed the model for comic opera

Also on this day:

1951: The birth of singer-songwriter Francesco De Gregori

1960: The birth of businesswoman Daniela Riccardi

1963: The birth of politician and journalist Irene Pivetti


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Muzio Clementi – composer and pianist

Musician is remembered as ‘father of the piano’

Muzio Clementi, the Italian composer who helped
found England's Royal Philharmonic Society

Composer Muzio Clementi, whose studies and sonatas helped develop the technique of the early pianoforte, was born on this day in 1752 in Rome.

He moved to live in England when he was young, where he became a successful composer and pianist and started a music publishing and piano manufacturing business. He also helped to found the Royal Philharmonic Society in London.

Clementi was baptised Mutius Philippus Vincentius Franciscus Xaverius the day after his birth at the Church of San Lorenzo in Damaso in Rome.

His father was a silversmith, who soon recognised Clementi’s musical talent and arranged for him to have lessons from a relative, who was maestro di cappella at St Peter’s Basilica.

By the time he was 13, Clementi had already composed an oratorio and a mass and he became the organist at his parish church, San Lorenzo in Damaso, at the age of 14.

Sir Peter Beckford, a wealthy Englishman, was so impressed with Clementi’s musical talent and his skill with the harpsichord when he visited Rome in 1766 that he offered to take him to England and sponsor his musical education until he was 21.

The interior of the church of San Lorenzo in Damaso in
Rome, where Clementi was baptized and was later organist

In return, Clementi was to provide musical entertainment for Beckford and his guests. The musician lived for seven years at Beckford’s country estate practicing on the harpsichord, composing sonatas and performing.

Mozart used the opening of one of Clementi’s sonatas in the overture for The Magic Flute. Although this was meant as a compliment, Clementi made sure he put it on record that his sonata had been written ten years before Mozart’s opera.

Clementi moved to live in London when he became an adult, playing the piano, composing, conducting and teaching music.

He began publishing music in 1798, taking over a firm in Cheapside, which was then the most prestigious shopping street in London. Ludwig van Beethoven gave him full publishing rights to all his music in England and in later life Beethoven started to compose chamber music specifically for the British market because of his connection with Clementi.

The house in Kensington Church Street where
Clementi lived in London

In 1813 Clementi was part of a group of prominent musicians who founded the Philharmonic Society of London, which became the Royal Philharmonic Society in 1912.

Bartolomeo Cristofori from Padua has been widely credited with creating the first piano as a development of the harpsichord in 1700.

The oldest surviving Cristofori piano is a 1720 model, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The piano had been slow to catch on, but after composers, such as Clementi, started writing for it, the piano became more popular and by the late 18th century it had become a leading musical instrument.

The piano was probably more of a success in England than anywhere else and Clementi carefully studied its features in order to make the best use of the instrument’s capabilities.

Many of his compositions have been lost or are incomplete, but his chief claims to fame are thought to be his piano sonatas and his studies, such as Gradus ad Parnassum - Steps Towards Parnassus - which he composed in 1817.

Clementi started a business manufacturing pianos in London and, as it flourished, he made important improvements to the construction of the instrument, some of which have become standard in the pianos manufactured today.

At a banquet held in his honour in London in 1827, one of the organisers noted in his diary afterwards that Clementi ‘improvised at the piano on a theme by Handel’.

The tomb of Muzio Clementi can be
found in Westminster Abbey

The musician made his last public appearance at a Philharmonic Society concert in 1828 and then retired and moved to live in Staffordshire.

Clementi died in Evesham in 1832 at the age of 80. He was buried in Westminster Abbey and on his tombstone inscription he is remembered as ‘father of the piano’.

Clementi had been married three times and had five children.

Among his descendants are the British Colonial administrators, Sir Cecil Clementi Smith and his nephew, Sir Cecil Clementi, Air Vice Marshall Cresswell Clementi of the RAF and a deputy governor of the Bank of England, Sir David Clementi.

Travel tip:

The Basilica of San Lorenzo in Damaso, the church where Clementi was baptised and also played the organ, is in the southern part of the historic centre of Rome between the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II and the Tiber. It may once have been the site of a pagan temple, but a church was built there in about 380 by Pope Damasus I. This building was demolished in the time of Pope Sixtus IV, who commissioned the construction of the Palazzo della Cancelleria in 1489. The new church of San Lorenzo in Damaso, where Clementi would have played the organ, was incorporated into the side of the palace.

The Palazzo della Cancelleria in Rome

Travel tip:

The Palazzo della Cancelleria, the Papal Chancellery, is believed to be the earliest Renaissance palace in Rome. It is a property of the Holy See and has been designated a World Heritage Site. Just to the south of the square named after the palace, Piazza della Cancelleria, is the Campo dè Fiori, the site of a market in Rome for centuries, which has plenty of bars and restaurants and is a popular nightspot when the markets stalls have all been packed away.

More reading:

Bartolomeo Cristofori - the inventor of the piano

Why Lorenzo Perosi chose sacred music over opera

How Nicolò Amati created the world's finest violins

Also on this day:

1980: The death of car designer Giovanni Michelotti, the man behind the Triumph Spitfire

(Picture credits: San Lorenzo interior by antmoose; London house by Simon Harriyott; tombstone by oosoom; Palazzo della Cancelleria by Lalupa)




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