(Gas’-pa-ra Spôn-te’-ne) 1774–1851 Italian composer Spontini was the central figure in French serious opera between 1800 and 1820. Many of Spontini’s early Italian comic operas are now lost, and he achieved only modest success before settling in Paris in 1803. He was composer for Empress Joséphine from 1805, and in 1810 was appointed director of the Théâtre-Italien. His reputation was ...
1774–1851, Italian Gaspare Spontini’s early career was blighted by insecurity after the French, under Napoleon Bonaparte, invaded Italy in 1796. Spontini, it seems, decided that his future lay in France, but after arriving in Paris in 1800 he found his musical style was unsuited to the prevailing genre, opéra comique. Spontini turned instead to ...
with Shakespeare’s play, although Shakespeare appeared in it. Le songe was Thomas’s passport into the French Academy of Music, where he was elected in 1851 to succeed Gaspare Spontini (1774–1851). Appointed professor at the Conservatoire in 1856, he graduated to director in 1871 and remained in the post until his death. Thomas was always susceptible to the influence ...
he retired. She was still at the peak of her powers and her fame when she died of cholera in 1854. Introduction | Early Romantic | Opera Personalities | Gaspare Spontini | Early Romantic | Opera ...
with a wooden baton. Recommended Recording: Violin Concerto No. 8, ‘Gesangsszene’, Pierre Amoyal, Lausanne CO (cond) Armin Jordan (Erato/Warner) Introduction | Early Romantic | Classical Personalities | Gaspare Spontini | Early Romantic | Classical ...
Les deux journées (‘The Two Days’, 1800), which expanded the dramatic possibilities of opéra comique. However, his works soon became outmoded, replaced by the grand Romantic operas of Spontini and Meyerbeer; Cherubini’s reputation faded and in the late nineteenth century he was remembered primarily for his treatise on counterpoint, although more recent revivals have led to a re-evaluation ...
staged in his lifetime, Das Liebesverbot (‘The Ban on Love’), which received a single, disastrous performance in 1836, and Rienzi, a gargantuan grand opéra inspired by Spontini and Meyerbeer that Wagner wrote in Paris, where he eked out a living between 1839 and 1842. Thanks to the help of Meyerbeer, Rienzi was accepted for performance ...
popular with audiences of the time. French Grand Opera In the 1830s and 1840s public and critical interest in Paris focused on an emerging new genre. Following the lead of Spontini and Méhul in the first decades of the century, composers of serious opera were turning to historical subjects that had a resonance in the present. Past revolutions, religious ...
– Mozart’s greatest operas are set to Italian librettos – and the wealth of Italian opera composers in the early nineteenth century (Rossini, Donizetti, Bellini, Cherubini, Spontini, Mercadante) is testimony to the richness of the tradition. But gradually composers of other nationalities, most notably German, began to forge their own national operatic voice. Mozart ...
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