Amilcare Ponchielli - opera composer

Success of La Gioconda put musician on map

Amilcare Ponchielli composed 11 operas

The opera composer Amilcare Ponchielli was born on this day in 1834 in Paderno Fasolaro, near Cremona, about 100km south-east of Milan in what is now Lombardia.

Ponchielli's works in general enjoyed only modest success, despite the rich musical invention for which he was later applauded.  One that did win acclaim in his lifetime, however, was La Gioconda, which was first produced in 1876 and underwent several revisions but remained unaltered after 1880.

Well known for the tenor aria, Cielo e Mar, and the ballet piece, Dance of the Hours, La Gioconda is the only opera by Ponchielli still performed today and many recordings have been made, featuring some of the biggest stars of recent times.

Maria Callas, Renata Tebaldi and Montserrat Caballe are among those to have played the role of Gioconda, written for soprano, while the lead tenor part of Enzo, whose affections are sought both by Gioconda and another major character, Laura, has been taken by Giuseppe Di Stefano, Carlo Bergonzi, Luciano Pavarotti and Placido Domingo among others.

Ponchielli had such a talent for music that he won a scholarship to Milan Conservatory at nine years old and had written his first symphony by the time he was 10.

He left the Conservatory in disappointment after being denied the professorship that was supposed to have been his prize in a competition and for a number of years his main musical occupation was as a bandmaster, at first in Piacenza and then Cremona.  He arranged and wrote more than 200 compositions for wind instruments.

The Milan Conservatory, which Ponchielli attended
from the age of nine years

His passion for opera was undiminished, however, and he achieved his first breakthrough with I promessi sposi (The Betrothed), an opera based on the novel by Alessandro Manzoni, which he had originally written soon after completing his studies and which earned him his first contract with a music publisher in 1872.

The original premiered at the Teatro Concordia in Cremona in 1856; the revised version was first performed at the Teatro Dal Verme in Milan. The leading soprano role was taken by Teresina Brambilla, from Cassano d'Adda, just outside Milan, whom Ponchielli would marry.

Ponchielli wrote 11 operas in total but none won him the acclaim he received for La Gioconda, which was based on Angelo, Tyrant of Padua, a play by Victor Hugo.

Listen to Luciano Pavarotti performing Cielo e Mar from La Gioconda

Nonetheless, works such as Il figliuol prodigo and Marion Delorme, from another play by Victor Hugo, both performed at Teatro alla Scala in Milan, are recognised as having been influences on a new generation of composers from which Giacomo Puccini, Pietro Mascagni and Umberto Giordano emerged.

In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed maestro di cappella of Bergamo Cathedral, and from the same year he was a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where his students included Puccini, Mascagni and Emilio Pizzi.

He died of pneumonia in Milan in 1886 and was buried in the city's Monumental Cemetery.

Travel tip:

Paderno Fasolaro, a small town in the heart of the Po Valley, is now known as Paderno Ponchielli in honour of its most famous native son.  It was given the name after local residents began a petition on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1934, although it took until 1950 for the President of the Republic, Luigi Einaudi, to issue a decree making the change legal.

The cathedral at Cremona is a fine
example of Romanesque style

Travel tip:

The city of Cremona has a strong musical tradition, particularly in the production of violins and other stringed instruments.  It was home to rival violin makers Antonio Stradivari, Giuseppe Guarneri and the Amati family.  Cremona has an exceptional Romanesque cathedral, with an ornate facade including a Renaissance logia with three niches, flanked by two orders of loggette (small logias).

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Umberto Giordano - opera composer

Death of the musician remembered for Andrea Chenier

Umberto Giordano was a contemporary
of Mascagni and Puccini, among others

Composer Umberto Giordano died on this day in 1948 in Milan at the age of 81.

He is perhaps best remembered for his opera, Andrea Chenier, a dramatic work about liberty and love during the French revolution, which was based on the real life story of the romantic French poet, André Chenier.

The premiere of the opera was held at Teatro alla Scala in Milan in 1896. At the time, its success propelled Giordano into the front rank of up-and-coming Italian composers alongside Pietro Mascagni, to whom he is often compared, and Giacomo Puccini.

Another of Giordano’s works widely acclaimed by both the public and the critics, is the opera, Fedora.

This had its premiere in 1898 at the Teatro Lirico in Milan. A rising young tenor, Enrico Caruso, played the role of Fedora’s lover, Loris. The opera was a big success and is still performed today.

Some of Giordano’s later works are less well-known but they have achieved the respect of the critics and music experts and are occasionally revived by opera companies.

The Teatro Argentina in Rome, which staged the first
production of Giordano's debut opera, Mala vita

Giordano was born in Foggia in Puglia in August 1867. He studied under Paolo Serrao at the Conservatoire of Naples.

He wrote his first opera, Marina, for a competition organised by the music publishers Casa Sonzogno for the best one-act opera. It was placed sixth of 73 entries. The competition, which is seen as marking the beginning of verismo movement in Italian opera, was won by Mascagni's Cavalleria rusticana. 

There was much interest in Marina, nonetheless, and Sonzogno commissioned Giordano to develop the idea further. The result was Mala vita, a gritty verismo opera about a labourer who vows to reform a prostitute if he is cured of his tuberculosis. 

The audience at the Teatro Argentina in Rome were somewhat scandalised when it played there in February 1892 but it was greeted with acclaim by audiences in Vienna, Prague and Berlin.


Giordano tried a more romantic topic with his next opera, Regina Diaz, but this was a failure and was cancelled after just two performances.

He moved to Milan and it was there he returned to verismo with Andrea Chenier and Fedora.

The theatre in Piazza Cesare Battisti in Foggia, the town where Giordano was born, has been renamed Teatro Giordano in his memory. There is also a large statue of the composer in Piazza Umberto Giordano in Foggia.

Teatro alla Scala opened in 1778, having been built to replace
the Teatro Regio Ducale, which had been destroyed in a fire 

Travel tip:

Opera lovers should visit Teatro alla Scala in Milan and go round the theatre’s museum to see the fantastic costumes and memorabilia from the history of opera on display. The museum in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza Scala, is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and certain days in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30 pm.  The theatre opened in 1778 as 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.

The statue of Umberto Giordano in
Piazza Umberto Giordano

Travel tip:

Foggia, where Umberto Giordano was born in 1867, is an important city in Puglia in the south of Italy. As well as the Teatro Giordano and Piazza Umberto Giordano, which honour the composer, Foggia has a Cathedral dating back to the 12th century well worth visiting. The city was once known as the ‘granary of Italy’, thanks to its proximity to a large plain, known as the Tavoliere delle Puglie, which enabled the growing of wheat and other grain plants on a large scale. There are many pasta factories, although productivity in the area is not limited to grains, being a significant producer of olives, grapes and cheeses too.  The old centre of the city is a network of narrow streets, at the heart of which is the part-Romanic, part-Baroque cathedral of Santa Maria de Fovea.

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