Arrigo Boito – writer and composer

Death of a patriot who fought for Venice

Arrigo Boito met Verdi in Paris

Arrigo Boito, who wrote both the music and libretto for his opera, Mefistofele, died on this day in 1918 in Milan.

Of all the operas based on Goethe’s Faust, Boito’s Mefistofele is considered the most faithful to the play and his libretto is regarded as being of particularly high quality.

Boito was born in Padua in 1842, the son of an Italian painter of miniatures and a Polish countess. He attended the Milan Conservatory and travelled to Paris on a scholarship.

It was there he met Giuseppe Verdi, for whom he wrote the text of the Hymn of the Nations in 1862.

He fought under the direction of Giuseppe Garibaldi in 1866 in the seven weeks of the Third Italian War of Independence, against Austria, after which Venice was ceded to Italy.

While working on Mefistofele, Boito published articles, influenced by the composer Richard Wagner, in which he vigorously attacked Italian music and musicians.

Verdi was deeply offended by his words and by 1868, when Mefistofele was produced in Milan, Boito’s opinions had provoked so much hostility there was nearly a riot.

The opera was withdrawn after two performances, but a revised version, produced in 1875, still survives.

Boito and Verdi in 1892

Influenced by Beethoven and Wagner, the opera was unconventional. Boito’s second opera, Nerone, was completed after his death by Vincenzo Tommasini and Arturo Toscanini and produced in Milan in 1924.

Boito and Verdi were reconciled in 1873 and Boito revised the libretto for Simon Boccanegra. He also produced a libretto for both Otello and Falstaff.

He wrote the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli’s La Giocondo in 1876 and also produced a volume of poetry and several novels. 

Boito received the honorary degree of Doctor of Music from the University of Cambridge in 1893.

After his death in 1918, he was interred at the Cimitero Monumentale in Milan.

A memorial concert was given in his honour at La Scala in 1948 when the orchestra was conducted by Arturo Toscanini. This concert has since been issued on CD.

The Scrovegni Chapel features the brilliant frescoes by Giotto

Travel tip:

Padua in the Veneto, where Boito was born, is one of the most important centres for art in Italy and home to the country’s second oldest university. Padua has become acknowledged as the birthplace of modern art because of the Scrovegni Chapel, the inside of which is covered with frescoes by Giotto, an artistic genius who was the first to paint people with realistic facial expressions showing emotion. His scenes depicting the lives of Mary and Joseph, painted between 1303 and 1305, are considered his greatest achievement. At Palazzo Bo, where Padua’s university was founded in 1222, you can still see the original lectern used by Galileo and the world’s first anatomy theatre, where dissections were secretly carried out from 1594.

Travel tip:

La Scala in Milan has a fascinating museum that displays costumes and memorabilia from the history of opera. The entrance is in Largo Ghiringhelli, just off Piazza della Scala. It is open every day except the Italian Bank Holidays and a few days when it is closed in December. Opening hours are from 9.00 to 12.30 and 1.30 to 5.30 pm.

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The Maestà of Duccio

Masterpiece influenced the course of Italian art history

Duccio's altarpiece in the Duomo di Siena, the Maestà

A magnificent altarpiece by the artist Duccio di Buoninsegna was unveiled in the cathedral in Siena on this day in 1311.

Duccio’s Maestà was to set Italian painting on a new course, leading away from Byzantine art towards using more realistic representations of people in pictures.

The altarpiece was commissioned by the city of Siena from the artist and was composed of many individual paintings.

The front panels made up a large picture of an enthroned Madonna and Child with saints and angels.

At the base of the panels was an inscription, which translated into English means: ‘Holy Mother of God, be thou the cause of peace for Siena and life to Duccio because he painted thee thus.’

Duccio's Madonna col bambino, which is housed
 in the Metropolitan Museum in New York

When the painting was installed in the cathedral on June 9, 1311, one witness to the event wrote: ‘…on that day when it was brought into the cathedral, all workshops remained closed and the bishop commanded a great host of devoted priests and monks to file past in solemn procession.

‘This was accompanied by all the high officers of the commune and by all the people; all honourable citizens of Siena surrounded said panel with candles held in their hands, and women and children followed humbly behind.

‘They accompanied the panel amidst the glorious pealing of bells after a solemn procession on the Piazza del Campo into the very cathedral; and all this out of reverence for the costly panel… the poor received many alms, and we prayed to the holy mother of God, our patron saint, that she might in her infinite mercy preserve this our city of Siena from every misfortune, traitor or enemy.’

The altarpiece remained in place until 1711, when it was dismantled in order to distribute the pieces between two altars. The five-metre high construction was sawn up and some of the paintings were damaged in the process. Some pieces went astray and are unaccounted for, while some pieces are now in museums.

The Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption in Siena

Travel tip:

Siena’s Duomo, the Cathedral of St Mary of the Assumption, was designed and completed between 1215 and 1263 on the site of an earlier structure. It has a beautiful façade built in Tuscan Romanesque style using polychrome marble. In the attached Museo dell’Opera del Duomo, Duccio’s Maestà can be seen in a first floor room.

Travel tip:

The shell-shaped Piazza del Campo in Siena, where the Palio di Siena takes place twice each year, was established in the 13th century as an open marketplace. It is now regarded as one of the finest medieval squares in Europe. The red brick paving, fanning out from the centre in nine sections, was put down in 1349.

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Giuseppe Fiorelli - archaeologist

The man whose painstaking work saved Pompeii

Giuseppe Fiorelli was in charge of the
Pompeii excavations from 1860-75

Giuseppe Fiorelli, the archaeologist largely responsible for preserving the ruins of Pompeii, was born on this day in 1823, in Naples.

It was due to Fiorelli’s painstaking excavation techniques that much of the lost Roman city on the Neapolitan coast was preserved as it had looked when, in 79 AD, it was totally submerged under volcanic ash following the eruption of Vesuvius.

He also hit upon the idea of filling the cavities in the hardened lava and solidified ash left behind by long-rotted bodies and vegetation with plaster to create a model of the person or plant that had been engulfed.  This became known as the Fiorelli process.

Little is known of Fiorelli’s early life apart from some details of his academic career, which clearly show him to be precociously clever.  He studied law from the age of 11 and obtained a degree in legal studies at the age of 18. He was also a student of italic languages, numismatics – the study of coins, paper money and medals - and epigraphy – the study and interpretation of ancient inscriptions.

Having chosen to pursue his interest in archaeology and the study of ancient civilisations, he wrote an article on numismatics for an erudite archaeological journal that won him membership of a number of academies at the age of 20, including the Accademia Ercolanese and the prestigious Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica.

One of the main streets in Pompeii

In 1844, still only 21, he was appointed an inspector in the Soprintendenza Generale degli Scavi – the body responsible for all excavations in the Naples region – and in 1847 inspector specifically for the Pompeii site.  His role at that stage was essentially to supervise other archaeologists to ensure their work was carried out in accordance with standards set down by the Soprintendenza.

In a bizarre twist to his story, in 1848 Fiorelli was arrested and imprisoned, in part as a result of malicious accusations made by rival archaeologists.

One was Carlo Bonucci, who had been demoted from his position as Architect-Director in charge of Pompeii after being found guilty of dishonesty but had been restored to his position when his successor fell ill.  Bonucci, an established archaeologist of twice Fiorelli’s age, resented his techniques being questioned by someone he regarded as a young upstart, and when the riots that erupted in Italy in 1848 prompted a collapse of government and a crackdown on political activists, he reported Fiorelli as nationalist republican.

Fiorelli was arrested and held in prison from April to June 1849, at which point he was released only to be re-arrested, this time after a member of the Accademia Ercolanese made a similar complaint.  It was January the following year before the case against him was dropped.

Fiorelli's techniques enabled models of the victims of the
eruption to be created exactly as they were buried

The episode set back his career but in 1853 he was offered a job as personal secretary to Leopold, Count of Syracuse, brother of the Bourbon King Ferdinand II, who used his influence to put Fiorelli in charge of the excavations at Cumae, another archaeological site in the Naples area.

Unrest in Italy continued, and as Leopold’s secretary, Fiorelli was able to use his influence with him in 1860, when Garibaldi’s Expedition of the Thousand set its sights on Naples, seeking to unify Italy under the King of Sardinia, Victor Emmanuel II. Fiorelli drafted a letter for Leopold to deliver to Ferdinand’s successor, King Francis, urging him to abdicate gracefully rather than be defeated.

Later in the year, Fiorelli returned to Pompeii as Inspector-Director of Excavations and began the work that was to make him famous.

Fiorelli introduced new excavation techniques. Where other archaeologists would attempt to dig out streets and uncover adjoining buildings from the bottom upwards, Fiorelli would work at all times from the surface downwards, carefully removing the covering layers of soil and volcanic materials, which took longer but, he felt, reduced the risk of damaging precious artefacts as they were uncovered.

His idea to fill cavities with plaster allowed the archaeologists to recreate the position and look of a body at the time of death.

Fiorelli directed the excavation of Pompeii from 1860 to 1875.  He was appointed director of the Naples National Archaeological Museum in 1863. In 1875 he was appointed as the director general of Italian Antiquities and Fine Arts. 

Fiorelli died in January 1896 in Naples. The cause of his death is unknown.

The Greek remains at Cumae

Travel tip:

Before Pompeii, Fiorelli was assigned to the ruins of the Greek city of Cumae, an ancient city of Magna Graecia on the coast of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Cumae was the first Greek colony on the mainland of Italy. The ruins of the city lie near the modern village of Cuma. In Roman mythology, there is an entrance to the underworld located at Avernus, a crater lake near Cumae. 

Travel tip:

Pompeii is believed to have grown on the site of a seventh or sixth century BC settlement by the Oscans that came under the domination of Rome in the fourth century BC, and became a Roman colony in 80 BC after soldiers of the Roman Republic crushed a rebellion there. By the time it was destroyed, its population as a port city was put at around 11,000 people. Evidence of its fate in the 79 AD eruption was first found in a surviving letter by Pliny the Younger, who described the death of his uncle, Pliny the Elder, an admiral of the Roman fleet, as he tried to rescue citizens.

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Gaetano Berenstadt – operatic castrato

Italian-born performer who specialised in roles created by Handel

Gaetano Berenstadt (right) in a caricatured impression
of his performance in Handel's Flavio

Gaetano Berenstadt, an alto castrato who sang many roles in George Frideric Handel’s operas, was born on this day in 1687 in Florence.

His parents were German and his father played the timpani - kettle drums - for the Grand Duke of Tuscany.

Berenstadt was sent to be a pupil of Francesco Pistocchi, a singer, composer and librettist who founded a singing school in Bologna.

After performing in Bologna and Naples, Berenstadt visited London where he performed the role of Argante in a revival of Handel’s Rinaldo. The composer created three new arias especially for Berenstadt’s voice.

George Frideric Handel created many
roles for Gaetano Berenstadt

On a later visit to London, Berenstadt sang for the composers of the Royal Academy of Music. On this visit he created the roles of Tolomeo in Handel’s Giulio Cesare, the title role in Flavio, and the role of Adalberto in Ottone.

Back in Italy, he sang music by Italian composers and in two new compositions by Johann Adolph Hasse. He usually took on the role of a villainous tyrant and, despite the quality of his voice, he never portrayed a female character.

His final appearances on stage were in his native Florence. In retirement he published some music of his own until his death in Florence in 1734.

Letters that he wrote, which describe his love of books and art, are still in existence and he built up an extensive library of old books and pamphlets.

Travel tip:

The Grand Dukes of Tuscany lived in Palazzo Pitti in Florence from the 16th century to the 18th century when the last Medici Duke died without a male heir. The Pitti Palace is on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance away from Ponte Vecchio. It is now the largest museum complex in Florence with eight museums and galleries.

The entrance to Teatro alla Pergola

Travel Tip:

Berenstadt would have probably sung at Teatro della Pergola in Florence in the centre of Florence on Via della Pergola. The theatre was built in 1656 to designs by architect Ferdinando Tacca, the son of the sculptor, Pietro Tacca. The interior was finished in time to celebrate the wedding of the future Grand Duke Cosimo III de Medici with a special production for the court.  It was opened to the public after 1718 and the theatre presented operas by Mozart for the first time in Italy.

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