Luigi Lablache – opera star

19^th century giant was Queen Victoria’s singing coach

Luigi Lablache appeared in his first
major role at the age of 18

The singer Luigi Lablache, whose powerful but agile bass-baritone voice and wide-ranging acting skills made him a superstar of 19^th century opera, was born in Naples on this day in 1794.

Lablache was considered one of the greatest singers of his generation; for his interpretation of characters such as Leporello in Mozart’s Don Giovanni, Geronimo in Domenico Cimarosa’s Il matrimonio segreto, Gottardo the Podestà in Gioachino Rossini’s La gazza ladra, Henry VIII in Gaetano Donizetti’s Anna Bolena and Oroveso in Vincenzo Bellini’s Norma he had few peers.

Donizetti created the role of Don Pasquale in his comic opera of the same name specifically for Lablache.

Lablache performed in all of Italy’s major opera houses and was a star too in Vienna, London, St Petersburg and Paris, which he adopted as his home in later life, having acquired a beautiful country house at Maisons-Laffitte, just outside the French capital. 

Lablache was a man of not
inconsiderable girth

He was approached to give singing lessons to the future Queen Victoria a year before she inherited the English throne, in 1836.  He found the future queen to have a clear soprano voice and a keen interest in music and opera and they developed a close bond, establishing an arrangement that would continue every summer for 20 years, coming to an end only when Lablache’s health began to decline.

Lablache’s father was a French merchant, Nicolas Lablache, who had fled Marseille during the Revolution.  His mother was an Irish woman.  They were well connected, and when his father died Luigi and his mother were helped by Joseph Bonaparte, a French diplomat whose elder brother, Napoleon, would eventually make King of Naples.

Luigi was sent to the Conservatorio della Pietà de’ Turchini in Naples, where he was taught singing and became proficient at playing the violin and cello.  His burning ambition at the time was to act and several times he ran away from the conservatory, hoping to join a theatre troupe, but each time was brought back, not least because he had revealed himself to have a wonderful voice, at that time a contralto.

Before it broke, he sang the solos in Mozart’s Requiem at the funeral of Joseph Haydn.  Later in life, he would sing at the funerals of Beethoven, Chopin and Bellini.

Once it had broken, his voice developed rapidly. In 1812, at just 18 years of age, he was engaged at the Teatro di San Carlo, Naples, and appeared in Valentino Fioravanti's La Molinara.

Lablache in Donizetti's Don Pasquale

He sang in Palermo from 1812 to 1817, when he moved to Teatro alla Scala in Milan to take the part of Dandini in Rossini's La Cenerentola.

His reputation spread throughout Europe.  From Milan he went to Turin, back to Milan in 1822 and then to Vienna via Venice. Returning to Naples after 20 years away, he gave a sensational performance as Assur in Rossini's Semiramide. In March 1830 he was first heard in London as Geronimo in Cimarosa's Il matrimonio segreto and from that year forward he would visit London annually.

Despite his physical size and the natural power of his voice, Lablache had the dexterity to produce comic, humorous, tender or sorrowful effects when requred and was versatile enough as an actor to be equally convincing in comic and dramatic parts.

While his size was arguably an asset to his vocal power, he was naturally of a lazy disposition and it is said he would have been content had he been nothing more than a provincial singer.

He was cajoled and encouraged to realise his potential largely by his wife, the singer Teresa Pinotti, whom he married when he was just 18 and who bore him 13 children.  Several of his children became singers themselves.  His descendants include the English-born Hollywood actor, Stewart Granger, who was his great-great-grandson.

His health began to deteriorate in around 1857 and he returned to Naples, taking a house in Posillipo in the hope that the warm southern Italian climate might reduce his tendency to develop chest infections.  The relief was only temporary, however, and he died in Naples in 1858 at the age of 64.

His body was returned to France and he was buried at Maisons-Laffitte in accordance with his wishes.

Villa Donn'Anna was built right on the sea's edge

Travel tip:

Posillipo is a residential quarter of Naples that has been associated with wealth in the city since Roman times. Built on a hillside that descends gradually towards the sea, it offers panoramic views across the Bay of Naples towards Vesuvius and has been a popular place to build summer villas. Some houses were built right on the sea’s edge, such as the historic Villa Donn’Anna, which can be found at the start of the Posillipo coast near the harbour at Mergellina.

Teatro San Carlo has been open for business since 1737

Travel tip:

The Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, where Lablache made his debut at the age of 18, is the oldest continually active venue for public opera performances in the world, having opened in 1737, more than 40 years ahead of both La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice.  It was also, when it opened, the largest opera venue in the world, with the capacity to accommodate 3,000 spectators, a large number of whom would be standing but of whom 1,379 would have seats, including those occupying the 184 boxes, arranged in a six-tier horseshoe around the stage.

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Lina Cavalieri – soprano

Christmas Day baby became singing beauty

Lina Cavalieri was described as 'the
world's most beautiful woman'

Singer and actress Lina Cavalieri was born Natalina - meaning 'Little Christmas' - Cavalieri on this day in 1874, in Viterbo in Lazio.

During her career she starred opposite Enrico Caruso in operas and earned the title of ‘the world’s most beautiful woman', while many of her female contemporaries tried to attain her hour-glass figure by using tight-laced corsetry.

Raised as one of five children in humble circumstances, she was expected to work to supplement the family income.  To this end, she sold flowers and sang on the streets of Rome.

After a music teacher heard her singing, she was offered some music lessons.  Subsequently, she found work as a café singer and then in theatres in Rome.

Increasingly popular both for her voice and her physical beauty, she made her way from Rome first to Vienna and then Paris where she performed in music halls including the Folies-Bergère and worked with singing coaches to develop her voice.

The progression to opera came in 1900, when she made her debut in Lisbon as Nedda in Pagliacci, by Ruggero Leoncavallo. It was in the same year that she married her first husband, the Russian Prince, Alexandre Bariatinsky, whom she had met in Paris and who had encouraged her to believe she should not be content with working in mere music halls.

The Lisbon audience gave her a difficult time, however, and the production was abandoned after only a few nights, at which point Bariatinsky left her.  Cavalieri returned to Paris and might have given up her operatic ambitions without the encouragement of her sister, Ada, who helped her rebuild her confidence.

Cavalieri starred opposite Enrico Caruso
in Paris and New York

After successes at Teatro San Carlo in Naples, in Warsaw, Ravenna, Palermo and St Petersburg, a breakthrough moment came when in 1905 she starred opposite Caruso in Umberto Giordano’s opera, Fedora, at the Sarah Bernhardt Theatre in Paris.

The performance was so successful they took the production to the Metropolitan Opera in New York.

Cavalieri stayed with the Met for two seasons, performing again with Caruso in 1907 in Giacomo Puccini’s opera Manon Lescaut. She became one of the most photographed stars of the time and women everywhere tried to copy her figure.

She had a brief, second marriage to Robert Winthrop Chanler, an American artist and a member of the Astor and Dudley-Winthrop families.  Married in 1910, the had separated within weeks and were divorced in 1912.

During her career she sang with many famous singers, including the French tenor Lucien Muratore, who became her third husband in 1913.

After retiring from the stage, Cavalieri ran a beauty salon in Paris and wrote an advice column on make-up for a magazine. She also launched her own range of beauty products and perfumes.

A poster for the film 'The World's Most
 Beautiful Woman' with Gina Lollobrigida

In 1915 she returned to Italy to make films and then went back to America, where she starred in silent movies, many of which have since been lost.

She moved to Italy again after marrying her fourth husband, the writer Paolo d’Arvanni.

Despite being in her sixties when the Second World War began, she became a volunteer nurse.

Tragically, Cavalieri and her husband were both killed in 1944 after an Allied bombing raid destroyed their home near Florence.

After her death, Cavalieri was painted repeatedly by the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti, who found her face in an old magazine and became obsessed with her, creating hundreds of versions of her image.

In 1955 she was portrayed by Gina Lollobrigida in the film Beautiful but Dangerous, which was alternatively called The World’s Most Beautiful Woman, a French-Italian production directed by Robert Z Leonard.

Travel tip:

Viterbo, where Lina Cavalieri was born, is the largest town in northern Lazio, situated about 80km (50 miles) north of Rome. In the 12th and 13th centuries, with Rome often chaotic as rival families engaged in feuds, Viterbo became a favourite refuge for embattled popes. Much of its most notable architecture, such as the Papal Palace, has echoes of that period. It was bombed heavily during the Second World War but much of its historical centre remained intact and nowadays it is a somewhat overlooked city.

The Villa del Poggio Imperiale outside Florence
(picture by Sailko via Wikimedia Commons)

Travel tip:

Lina Cavalieri was killed at her home just outside Florence at Poggio Imperiale, near the imposing neoclassical Villa del Poggio Imperiale, which was once the home of the Grand Dukes of Tuscany. It was seized from the Salviati family by the Medici and was then later given to Napoleon’s sister before becoming a girl’s school. Some of the frescoed state rooms are open to the public by appointment.

More reading:

Giuseppina Strepponi - the inspiration for Donizetti and Verdi

How Ruggero Leoncavallo created one of the world's favourite operas

Renata Tebaldi - soprano with the 'voice of an angel'

Also on this day:

Christmas in Italy


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Vincenzo Bellini – opera composer

Short but successful career of Sicilian musical genius

A portrait of Vincenzo Bellini

The talented composer of the celebrated opera, Norma, was born Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini on this day in 1801 in Catania in Sicily.

Bellini became known for his long, flowing, melodic lines, which earned him the nickname, ‘The Swan of Catania’. He enjoyed great success during the bel canto era of Italian opera in the early part of the 19th century and many of his operas are still regularly performed today.

Born into a musical family, Bellini showed early talent. It was claimed he could sing an aria at 18 months and could play the piano by the age of five. Although some writers have said these are exaggerations, Bellini is known to have already begun composing music by his teens.

He was given financial support by the city of Catania to study music at a college in Naples and while he was there he was profoundly influenced by meeting the composer Gaetano Donizetti, having heard his opera, La zingara, performed at Teatro di San Carlo.

Bellini then wrote his first opera, Adelson e Salvini, which his fellow students performed to great acclaim.

In 1825, Bellini began work on what was to be his first professionally-produced opera, Bianca e Fernando. It was premiered at Teatro di San Carlo on 30 May, 1826 and was a big success. Donizetti attended the performance and wrote about it enthusiastically to his former tutor in Bergamo.

Teatro alla Scala in the 18th century

After Bellini was commissioned to compose an opera by Teatro alla Scala in Milan he moved to live in the city in 1827.

During the six years he spent in Milan he wrote four masterpieces, Il pirata, I Capuletti e I Montecchi, La sonnambula and Norma.

The tenor, Giovanni Battista Rubini, attracted rave reviews for his performance in Il pirata, having been urged by Bellini to act the part as well as sing it.

Norma was given 39 performances in its first season at La Scala and was equally popular when it was later performed in Bergamo.

When Bellini returned to Sicily in 1832, his opera, Il pirata, was a big success at the Teatro della Munzione in Messina and he was given a civic welcome when he arrived in Catania.

Excerpts from his operas were performed in a concert at the Teatro Massimo Bellini, which had been named by the city in his honour.

The Teatro Massimo Bellini in Catania

Bellini’s visit to London in 1833 was a triumph, with La sonnambula and Norma attracting excellent reviews, and he was fêted by the fashionable set when he moved on to Paris.

However, when he began composing I puritani he moved out of Paris to live in nearby Puteaux in order to concentrate fully on the opera.

The opera was premiered at the Theatre-Italien in Paris on 24 January 1835 and was given an enthusiastic reception.

In the aftermath of the opera’s success, Bellini was named by King Louis-Philippe as Chevalier of the Legion d’honneur and he was awarded the cross of the Order of Francesco I by King Ferdinand II in Naples.

But Bellini was being increasingly troubled by gastric problems and became seriously ill later in the year. The composer died on 23 September 1835 at his home in Puteaux. He was just 33 years old.

Bellini was buried in a French cemetery as a short-term arrangement and his remains were taken to Catania and reburied in the Cathedral there in 1876.

Vincenzo Bellini's tomb in the Duomo
in Catania, his birthplace

Travel tip:

Catania, where Bellini was born, is an ancient city on Sicily’s east coast, situated at the foot of Mount Etna, an active volcano. There is a monument to Bellini in the Cathedral in Piazza del Duomo and a museum dedicated to his life, the Bellini Museum, which was opened in 1930 in Palazzo Gravina-Cruyllas, the house where he was born.

Travel tip:

Teatro San Carlo in Naples, where Bellini’s first professionally-produced opera was staged, is thought to be the oldest opera house in the world. It was officially opened in 1737, way ahead of La Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice. The theatre is in Via San Carlo close to Piazza Plebiscito, the main square in Naples. It was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I. In the magnificent auditorium the royal box is surmounted by the crown of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies.

More reading:

The genius of Gaetano Donizetti

Giovanni Battista Rubini - as famous in his day as Pavarotti

Teatro San Carlo - the world's oldest opera house

Also on this day:

The end of the First World War in Italy

(Photo of Bellini's tomb by G.dallorto)

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Eduardo De Filippo - Neapolitan dramatist

Playwright captured essence of city's spirit

A playwright and dramatist, Eduardo De
Filippo was also an accomplished actor

One of Italy’s greatest dramatists, Eduardo De Filippo, died on this day in 1984 in Rome at the age of 84.

An actor and film director as well as a playwright, De Filippo – often referred to simply as Eduardo – is most remembered as the author of a number of classic dramas set in his native Naples in the 1940s that continue to be performed today.

Arguably the most famous of these was Filomena marturano, upon which was based the hit movie Marriage, Italian Style, which starred Sophia Loren and Marcello Mastroianni under the direction of Vittorio de Sica. 

De Filippo’s other memorable works included Napoli Milionaria, Le voci di dentro and Sabato, domenica e lunedi.

All of these plays showcased De Filippo’s ability to capture the essence of life in Naples in his time, particularly in the working class neighbourhoods that he felt were the beating heart of the city.

Rich in Neapolitan dialect, they were often bittersweet comedies of family life. They were social commentaries in which typical themes were the erosion of morals in times of desperation, the struggle of the downtrodden to retain their dignity and the preservation of family values even in the most poverty-stricken households.

Born out of wedlock, the son of a playwright, Eduardo Scarpetta, and the seamstress and costumier Luisa De Filippo, Eduardo was destined for a life in the theatre and appeared in one of his father’s plays at the age of five.

De Filippo often played opposite his sister, Titina

At 32 he formed his own stage company, the ‘Compagnie del Teatro Umoristico i de Filippo’, with his brother Peppino and sister Titina. The trio enjoyed success in films and on the stage in the 1930s but broke up soon after the Second World War.

But it was his plays that were his enduring legacy, for which many critics place him among the greatest of Italian dramatists, in the company of Carlo Goldoni and Luigi Pirandello.

Napoli milionaria (Naples Millionaire), written in 1945 is a realistic drama about a family's involvement in the Italian black market, set against the deprivations of war.He followed this with Questi fantasmi! (Neapoliitan Ghosts), a 1946 comedy in which a husband mistakes his wife's lover for a ghost.

In the same year came Filumena marturano, in which a former prostitute obtains financial stability for her three children by persuading her lover he is the father of one of them, without saying which.

De Filippo continued in 1948 with Le voci di dentro (Inner Voices), in which a man mistakes for reality a dream in which a friend is murdered by neighbours.

De Filippo (right) with the Italian president,
Sandro Pertini. De Filippo was made a life senator

His work became popular outside Italy.  In 1972, with his own production company, he took Naples Millionaire to London. The following year, the National Theatre in London produced Saturday, Sunday, Monday, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, with Joan Plowright and Frank Finlay. It won the London drama critics’ award as the best play of the year.

De Filippo, who had begun directing films in 1940, had some success as a director in the 1950s, his films largely light comedies.

In 1979, Laurence Olivier directed Frank Finlay and Joan Plowright in Filumena. Later, Sir Ralph Richardson had the final role of his career, playing Don Alberto, in the National Theatre's 1983 production of Inner Voices.

Filumena remains popular in Russia, where it is not forgotten that, in the 1960s in Moscow, the audience demanded and were granted 24 curtain calls after Eduardo's own company performed the work.

Napoli Milionaria, which opened at the Teatro San Carlo in Naples in March,1945, featuring Eduardo himself, became a film in 1951, with him in the leading role. It was also adapted as an opera with music by the film composer, Nino Rota, and a libretto written by Eduardo himself. It opened in June 1977 at the Festival of Two Worlds in Spoleto.

In 1981, De Filippo was appointed life senator of the Italian Republic. He died three years later.

The sumptuous interior of the Teatro San Carlo

Travel tip:

The Teatro San Carlo, Europe’s oldest theatre and opera house, suffered bomb damage during the war and its rebirth was a testament to the determination of Neapolitans not to allow their city’s heritage to be crushed. After one raid in 1943, the foyer that runs the whole length of the theatre suffered blast damage, many of the boxes were unusable, the dressing rooms were hit, the scenery and paint shop, the costume and wardrobe stores left beyond repair. Yet within a week the theatre was up and running again and staging musical productions. De Filippo’s play. Napoli Milionaria, which premiered there in 1945, was hailed for reflecting the city’s resourcefulness in the most testing of circumstances.

Travel tip:

Although Italian spoken by Neapolitans is often clear and easy to follow if you have some acquaintance with the language, dialect is widely used and many words differ from standard Italian. For a tomato, for example, Neapolitans say pummarola rather than pomodoro; for boy or girl they use the word guaglio/a rather than ragazzo/a; and for this and that (questo e quello) they say chisto and chillo.  In O Sole Mio, the famous Neapolitan song, the ‘O’ means ‘the’, as in ‘The sun of mine’ not ‘Oh sun of mine’.

More reading:

Roberto Benigni - Oscar winning director and star of Life is Beautiful

Arnold Foà - versatile actor still doing stage work in his 90s

Anna Magnani - earthy character actress who won over Rossellini

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Fire at Teatro di San Carlo

Royal theatre reopens quickly after blaze 

The damage wreaked by the 1816 fire, captured in a
painting by an unknown artist

Fire broke out during a dress rehearsal for a ballet at Teatro di San Carlo in Naples on this day in 1816.

The flames spread quickly, destroying a large part of the building in less than an hour.

The external walls were the only things left standing, but on the orders of Ferdinand IV, King of Naples, the prestigious theatre was rebuilt at once.

It was reconstructed following designs drawn up by architect Antonio Niccolini for a horseshoe-shaped auditorium with 1,444 seats. A stunning fresco was painted in the centre of the ceiling above the auditorium depicting a classical subject, Apollo presenting to Minerva the greatest poets of the world.

The rebuilding work took just ten months to complete and the theatre reopened to the public in January 1817.

Teatro di San Carlo had opened for the first time in 1737, way ahead of Teatro alla Scala in Milan and La Fenice in Venice.

Gioachino Rossini is among the former
artistic directors at San Carlo

Built in Via San Carlo close to Piazza Plebiscito, the main square in Naples, Teatro di San Carlo had quickly become one of the most important opera houses in Europe, known for its excellent productions.

The original theatre was designed by Giovanni Antonio Medrano for the Bourbon King of Naples, Charles I, and took only eight months to build.

The official inauguration was on the King’s saint’s day, the festival of San Carlo, on the evening of November 4. There was a performance of Achille in Sciro by Pietro Metastasio with music by Domenico Sarro, who also conducted the orchestra for the music for two ballets.

This was 41 years before La Scala and 55 years before La Fenice opened. San Carlo is now believed to be one of the oldest remaining opera houses in the world, if not the oldest.

Both Gioachino Rossini and Gaetano Donizetti served as artistic directors at San Carlo and the world premieres of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermoor and Rossini’s Mosè were performed there.

During the Second World War the theatre was damaged by bombs but after the liberation of Naples in 1943 it was repaired and was able to reopen.

Between 2008 and 2009 a major refurbishment was carried out but the theatre reopened again to the public in 2010.

Inside Teatro di San Carlo, looking down
from above the royal box

Travel tip:

In the magnificent auditorium, the focal point is the royal box surmounted by the crown of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies. Opera enthusiasts can take a guided tour of the theatre and see the foyers, the auditorium, the boxes and the royal box. Tours run at 10.30, 11.30, 12.30, 14.30, 15.30 and 16.30 between Monday and Saturday and at 10.30, 11.30 and 12.30 on Sundays. Booking is recommended.

Naples accomodation by Booking.com

Travel Tip:

Close to Teatro di San Carlo in the centre of ‘royal’ Naples, there are many other sights, such as Galleria Umberto I, Caffè Gambrinus, the church of San Francesco di Paola and Palazzo Reale, that are all well worth visiting.


More reading:

The 1996 fire that destroyed La Fenice opera house in Venice

How Pietro Metastasio progressed from street entertainer to renowned librettist

Donizetti - the musical genius born in a darkened basement

Also on this day:

1539: The death of influential marchioness Isabella d’Este

1571: The death of painter Benvenuto Cellini

1912: The birth of poet Antonia Pozzi

1960: The birth of football referee Pierluigi Collina

(Painting: Rossini portrait by Vincenzo Camuccini, Museo del Teatro alla Scala in Milan) 

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