Ignazio Fiorillo – composer

Talented Neapolitan influenced music in Germany

Fiorillo studied music at the Naples
Conservatory in his home town

Ignazio Fiorillo, who is remembered as an opera seria composer, was born in Naples on this day in 1715.

Fiorillo often composed music for the libretti of the acclaimed writer, Pietro Metastasio, creating the type of noble and serious operas that were fashionable in Europe in the 18th century.

After studying music at the Naples Conservatory, Fiorillo composed the opera L’egeste, which was premiered in Trieste in 1733.

Another of his operas, Mandane, was first performed at the Teatro Sant’Angelo in Venice in 1736.

Fiorillo was later engaged as a composer for an ensemble specialising in performances for children and toured Europe with them.

Pietro Metastasio was one of the most
acclaimed librettists of his day

In 1749 they stayed in Braunschweig in Germany at the court of Carl I von Braunschweig-Wolfenbüttel. Fiorillo was appointed court composer the following year and during his remaining time at Braunschweig composed most of his operas.

He became composer to the court of Frederick II Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel in 1762 and went on to improve significantly the quality of court opera in Kassel. He also composed intermezzi and stage music for court theatre.

Ignazio Fiorillo retired in 1779 and died in Fritlar in Germany in 1787.

His son, Federigo, who had been born in 1753, became a violinist and composer and is best remembered for his collection of études.

The Naples Conservatory adjoins the church
of San Pietro a Majella

Travel tip:

A Neapolitan by birth, Fiorillo studied at the Naples Music Conservatory. Today, the Music Conservatory is in the complex of San Pietro a Majella, close to Via dei Tribunali, one of the main thoroughfares in the heart of the centro storico in Naples. It is the last in a long series of establishments that were once music conservatories in Naples, dating back to when the Spanish ruled the city in the 16th century. One of the earliest, I Poveri di Gesù Cristo, was founded in 1589 by Marcello Fossataro, a Franciscan monk. It was next to the Church of Santa Maria a Colonna on Via dei Tribunale, but in 1743 it was converted into a church seminary.

The Palazzo Barocci, now a top hotel, is only a short
 distance from the Sant'Angelo vaporetto stop

Travel tip:

Teatro Sant’Angelo, where Fiorillo’s opera Mandane, was premiered in 1736, was a theatre in Venice between 1677 and 1803. It was in Campo Sant’Angelo facing the Grand Canal and the Rialto Bridge and was the venue for many operas by Antonio Vivaldi and plays by Carlo Goldoni. After the theatre closed, the building was converted into a warehouse, but was later demolished and rebuilt as the Palazzo Barocci. Today it is the four-star Hotel NH Collection Palazzo Barocci, just a few steps from the Sant’Angelo vaporetto stop.


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Antonio Priuli - Doge of Venice

Doge clamped down on Spanish ‘spies’

Antonio Priuli rounded up hundreds of
suspected Spanish plotters

Antonio Priuli, who was the 94th Doge of Venice, was born on this day in 1548 in Venice.

He took office in 1618 in the midst of allegations that the Spanish were conspiring to invade Venice. He immediately began a brutal process of ferreting out individuals suspected of plotting against La Serenissima, the Most Serene Republic of Venice.

The so-called ‘spy war’ did not end until 1622 and resulted in the imprisonment and deaths of many innocent people.

Priuli was the son of Girolamo Priuli and Elisabetta Cappello. He grew up to enjoy a successful career as a sailor and a soldier and married Elena Barbarigo, with whom he had 14 children.

In 1618 Priuli was appointed provveditore, a type of governor, of Veglia, an island in the Adriatic, which now belongs to Croatia.

That same year, following the death of Doge Nicolo Donato, Priuli was recalled from Veglia to become the next Doge.

At the time it was believed that the Spanish, led by the Spanish Ambassador to Venice, Alfonso de la Cueva, 1st Marquis of Bedmar, had landed mercenaries on Venetian territory. It was thought Bedmar had successfully infiltrated the Venetian military and that a Spanish fleet was poised to take Venice.

On Priuli’s orders, hundreds were arrested, many of them foreign soldiers and sailors. Among the innocent victims was Antonio Foscarini, a Venetian nobleman who was arrested after attending an event at the English embassy and executed in April 1622.

The Venetian government issued an apology for Foscarini’s execution the following year and then scaled down the search for plotters. Priuli died just a few months later on August 12, 1623 in Venice.

The Palazzo Priuli in Castello is now an hotel

Travel tip:

Palazzo Priuli, Antonio Priuli’s family home, is now the four-star Hotel Palazzo Priuli in Castello overlooking Fondamento Osmarin. This fine Venetian Gothic palace was built in the 14th century and still has the original, elegant windows. You can choose to stay in the Doge Antonio Priuli suite, which is furnished with a Murano glass chandelier and oriental rugs to create the atmosphere of a noble Venetian’s home.

The Doge's Palace was the home of the Doge and the
seat of the government of the Venetian Republic

Travel tip:

The Doge’s Palace, where Antonio Priuli lived during his five-year reign, was the seat of the Government of Venice and the home of the Doge from the early days of the republic. For centuries this was the only building in Venice entitled to the name palazzo. The others were merely called Cà, short for Casa. The current palazzo was built in the 12th century in Venetian Gothic style, one side looking out over the lagoon, the other side looking out over the piazzetta that links St Mark’s Square with the waterfront. It opened as a museum in 1923 and is now run by the Fondazione Musei Civici di Venezia.

Also on this day: 

1922: The birth of Neapolitian journalist Antonio Ghirelli

1949: The birth of Miuccia Prada, driving force behind the Prada fashion label

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Giovanni Paisiello - composer

Audience favourite with a jealous streak

Giovanni Paisiello was one of the most
popular Italian composers in the 18th century

The composer Giovanni Paisiello, who wrote more than 90 operas and much other music and was enormously popular in the 18th century, was born on this day in 1740 in Taranto.

Paisiello was talented, versatile and had a big influence on other composers of his day and later, yet he was jealous of the success of rivals and is remembered today primarily as the composer whose passionate fans wrecked the premiere of Gioachino Rossini’s opera Almaviva, which was based on the same French play as Paisiello’s Il barbiere di siviglia, which was regarded as his masterpiece.

Rossini’s opera would eventually be more commonly known as Il barbiere di siviglia, but not until after Paisiello had died.

Nonetheless, Paisiello’s supporters still felt Rossini was attempting to steal their favourite’s thunder and many of them infiltrated the audience at Almaviva’s opening night in Rome and disrupted the performance with constant jeers and catcalls.

History has shown that perhaps they were right to be worried: today, Rossini’s Barber of Seville is one of the world’s most popular operas, yet Paisiello’s is rarely performed.

Paisiello was educated at a Jesuit school in Taranto. His father wanted his son to become a lawyer but noted the beauty of his singing voice and enrolled him at the Conservatory of San Onofrio at Naples.

A poster advertising the premiere
of Paisiello's opera Nina

There he displayed a talent for composing too, and the quality of some intermezzi he wrote for the conservatory’s theatre led to him being invited to write his first operas, La Pupilla and Il Marchese Tulissano. These brought him instant recognition and he settled in Naples, producing a series of successful operas, popular for being simple, dramatic, and always fast moving.

He set himself up in rivalry with the established giants of the Neapolitan school, Niccolò Piccinni, Domenico Cimarosa and Pietro Guglielmi. He was known for being bitterly outspoken when one or another of the trio staged a work that received public acclaim, but he enjoyed his own triumphs, in particular with his 1767 comic opera L'ldolo cinese. 

Paisiello left Naples only when he was invited in 1776 by the Russian empress Catherine II to St. Petersburg, where he remained for eight years. It was there that he produced Il barbiere di siviglia, with a libretto by Giuseppe Petrosellini, based on the play by Pierre Beaumarchais.

Il barbiere premiered in St Petersburg in 1782 and its fame spread quickly around Europe. Among those influenced by the artistry of his score and the beauty of the melodies was Mozart, whose Marriage of Figaro made its debut four years later as a sequel to Paisiello’s Barbiere.

Paisiello left Russia in 1784, initially going to Vienna before returning to Naples to enter the service of King Ferdinand IV, where he enjoyed more success, composing what many regard as his best operas, including Nina and La Molinara, the latter featuring perhaps the best-known tune that Paisiello wrote in his lifetime, the duet Nel cor più non mi sento, which inspired works by Beethoven, Paganini and many others.

Domenico Cimarosa was a target for
Paisiello's outspoken comments

His decline began after he was invited to Paris in 1802 by Napoleon, for whom he had composed a march for the funeral of General Hoche. This time his rivals were Luigi Cherubini and Etienne Méhul, towards whom he displayed similar jealousy to that he once aimed at Cimarosa, Guglielmi and Piccinni.

However, the Parisian public was unimpressed and in 1803 he obtained permission to return to Italy, citing his wife's ill health. He kept his job in Naples even after the fall of Ferdinand IV, who was replaced as king by Napoleon’s brother, Joseph, and in turn by Joachim Murat.

But by then he was beginning to lose his touch and his fortunes declined just as the power of the Bonapartes was collapsing. His wife died in 1815 and his own health failed quickly thereafter. He died in 1816 at the age of 76.

In addition to his operas, Paisiello wrote a good deal of church music and instrumental works that include symphonies, harp and piano concerti, string quartets, sonatas for harp, violin and cello.

The 20th century saw his Barbiere and La Molinara revived along with a number of other operas and instrumental pieces.

The Castello Aragonese is a landmark in Taranto

Travel tip:

Taranto, situated at the top of the inside of the ‘heel’ of Italy, where Paisiello was born, is a large city - population in excess of 200,000 - of two distinct sections, divided by a swing bridge. The bridge links the small island containing the Città Vecchia, the old city, guarded by the imposing 15th century Castello Aragonese castle, which protects an area of Greek origins which has not been overdeveloped and has an authentic atmosphere of old southern Italy.  On the southern side of the bridge is the modern, new city, full of wide boulevards and carrying a much more prosperous air.  The city is heavily industrialised with a huge steel industry and a large naval base but its National Museum contains one of the most important collections of Greek and Roman artefacts in Italy.

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio

Travel tip:

The Conservatorio of San Onofrio a Porta Capuana was one of the four original Naples conservatories, founded in 1588 and developed first as an orphanage. Almost one fifth of the students at the Conservatory of San Onofrio were castrati, which gave it a different identity.  Its popularity declined during the Napoleonic period, and only 30 students remained when the conservatory merged with that of Santa Maria di Loreto in 1797.

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Victor Amadeus I of Savoy

Duke’s French connection may have proved fatal

Victor Amadeus ruled the Duchy of Savoy
for seven years until his death

Victor Amadeus I, who during his seven-year reign over Savoy was forced to give strategic territory to France, was born on this day in 1587 in Turin.

He was the son of Charles Emmanuel I, Duke of Savoy, and Catherine Micaela of Spain, daughter of Philip II of Spain.

Victor Amadeus spent much of his childhood in Madrid at the court of his grandfather.

He became heir-apparent to the Duchy of Savoy, when his brother, Filippo Emanuele, died in 1605 and he succeeded to the Dukedom after his father’s death in 1630.

Charles Emmanuel’s policies had made relationships with France and Spain unstable and troops were needed to defend the Duchy.

But as there was no money to recruit mercenaries or train local soldiers, Victor Amadeus signed a peace treaty with Spain.

In 1619 he married Christine Marie of France, the daughter of Henry IV of France and Marie de Medici.

After war broke out amongst rival claimants to the city of Mantua, the French took the fortress of Pinerolo, part of the Duchy of Savoy, in 1630.

The Treaty of Cherasco the following year brought peace again to northern Italy. According to the treaty, France renounced its conquests in Piedmont, but it was later discovered that Victor Amadeus had surrendered Pinerolo to France.

Pinerolo sits in the shadow of the Alps about 40km
southwest of Turin, about 75m from the French border

This gave France a strategic route into the heart of Savoy territory and then into the rest of Italy. Subsequent rulers of the House of Savoy resented this loss and strived to regain the territory.

In league with the French army, Victor Amadeus defeated the Spanish forces in the Battle of Tornavento in 1636 and the Battle of Mombaldone in 1637.

The French Marquis du Crequi held a banquet on 25 September 1637 to celebrate the victories and Victor Amadeus attended.  Several guests at the banquet subsequently became ill, including the Duke of Savoy. 

Victor Amadeus was taken to Vercelli where his condition worsened and he passed away a few days later in October 1637. As it was well known that there had been friction between him and Crequi because their military strategies had been incompatible, rumours soon circulated that the Duke of Savoy had been poisoned.

His widow, Christine Marie of France, served as regent of the duchy until 1663. It was inherited in turn by her sons, Francis Hyacinth, and Charles Emmanuel II.

The Piazza Duomo in Pinerolo 

Travel tip:

Pinerolo is a town about 40km (25 miles) southwest of Turin on the River Chisone in Piedmont. It was one of the principal fortresses of the dukes of Savoy. French troops invading Piedmont in 1536 conquered Pinerolo and it stayed under French control until 1696. The Man in the Iron Mask, who was a legendary unidentified French prisoner, was held in the Fortress of Pinerolo from 1669 to 1681 when he was moved to another prison. The prisoner has been featured in various works of fiction, most famously in the novel The Vicomte de Bragelonne, by Alexandre Dumas.

Piazza Umberto I in Mombaldone

Travel tip:

The Battle of Mombaldone, where Savoy troops and French forces defeated the Spanish army, took place on September 8, 1637 at Mombaldone, a comune in the province of Asti, about 70 kilometres south east of Turin. Featured by I Borghi piu belli d’Italia - a private association that promotes small Italian towns it deems to be of "strong historical and artistic interest" - Mombaldone still has its medieval centre and part of its 13th century castle, which was badly damaged during the battle.

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