Sicilian whose popularity drew scorn from rivals
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| Errico Petrella's operas enjoyed great popularity in Italy in the 1850s and 1860s |
His composed 25 works, mainly comedic or melodramatic in
nature, and had a run of successes in the 1850s, when three of his productions were premiered at Teatro alla
Scala in Milan.
However, Petrella attracted the scorn of both Verdi and
another contemporary, the German composer Richard Wagner, both of whose careers
coincided exactly with Petrella’s, even down to having been born in the same
year.
When Il Duca di Scilla had its first performance at La Scala
in March 1859, a year on from his hugely successful Jone, which also premiered
at the Milan theatre, Wagner’s criticism could have hardly been more
unflattering.
Asked his opinion of the work, Wagner said: “It is an
unbelievably worthless and incompetent operatic effort by a modern composer
whose name I have forgotten.”
Some years earlier, admittedly before Petrella had enjoyed
much success at all, Verdi had been similarly scathing in his assessment of the
1951 opera Le Precauzioni, set against the background of the Venice Carnival,
which made its debut at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples.
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| Verdi claimed that Petrella 'did not know music' despite his popularity |
Verdi was less rude than Wagner, but his words were equally
damaging. Opera historians suspect that Verdi’s quarrel was with Petrella’s
conception of opera, which had a lot in common with the Neapolitan school in
general in that it was less demanding of the singers.
In fact, although born in Palermo, Petrella was effectively
a Neapolitan himself, his father having been a naval officer from Naples who
was based in Sicily.
Petrella attended the Naples Conservatory and his style
almost certainly owed much to his teacher, the conservatory’s director, Nicolo
Zingarelli, whose advice was to think first of the audience rather than trying
to impress other composers.
Zingarelli told him: “If you sing in your compositions, rest
assured that your music will be found pleasing. If you amass harmonies, double
counterpoint, fugues, canons, notes, contranotes etc. instead, the musical
world may applaud you after half a century or it may not; but the audience will
certainly disapprove of you. They want melodies, melodies, always melodies.”
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| The libretto from Petrella's most famous work, Jone, published in 1858 |
However, Petrella’s Jone – set against the background of the
eruption of Vesuvius that buried Pompeii - was so popular it was produced as
many as 600 times, compared with no more than 60 for Verdi’s Simon Boccanegra,
which premiered only a year earlier.
Petrella had needed to wait a long time to find success
after making his theatre debut in 1929.
It was not until he had written half a dozen works to only
modest acclaim that he began to attract attention. Il carnevale di Venezia,
which had its premier at the Teatro Nuovo in Naples in May, 1851, is seen as
the opera that put him on the map.
He followed this with Elena di Tolosa, which made its debut
at the Teatro Fondo in August 1852, Marco Visconti (San Carlo, Naples, 1854), L'assedio
di Leida (La Scala, 1856) and then Jone (La Scala, 1858), the premier of which
was a major event in the operatic world, drawing appreciative audiences in
Milan and beyond.
It became a regularly performed opera in Italy and remained
so well into the 20th century, with productions around the world in venues as
far flung as Melbourne, Calcutta, Jakarta, Santiago, Lima, Manila and Tbilisi. His most critical reviews still derided his
unashamed attempts to court popularity rather than treat opera as high art, but
had to concede that he could write a good tune.
Petrella suffered from diabetes in later life and died in financial
hardship in Genoa in 1877, aged 64.
Despite his outspoken comments, Verdi is said to have felt sorry for the
plight of his fellow musician and sent him some money, although reputedly it
did not arrive until after he had passed away.
His body was returned to Palermo, where he is buried in the church
of San Domenico.
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| The impressive facade of the church of San Domenico, the second most important church in Palermo |
The church of San Domenico in Piazza San Domenico is the
second most important church in Palermo after the cathedral. Completed in 1770
on the site of previous churches built in the Middle Ages and the early
Renaissance period. The current church
was designed by Andrea Cirrincione, who conceived the magnificent baroque façade,
which was completed in 1726, with the bell tower added later. In 1853 it was
declared the “pantheon of illustrious Sicilians” and contains the tombs of many
of the island’s most notable figures, including the artist Pietro Novelli, the Risorgimento
protagonist Francesco Crispi, the politician and revolutionary Ruggero Settimo
and the anti-Mafia judge Giovanni Falcone.
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| Via Errico Petrella in Milan |
The memory of Errico Petrella is preserved in Milan in the
name of a street linking Via Luigi Settembrini and Corso Buenos Aires in a residential
area a few blocks from the central station. There is also a street in Turin
that takes his name while there is a Teatro Errico Petrella in the pretty hill
town of Longiano in Emilia-Romagna, situated about 30km (19 miles) southeast of
Forlì.
