Born in 1795, Mercadante studied in Naples, attracting the attention of Rossini. His first opera, L’apoteosi d’Ercole, was well received in 1819 at the Teatro San Carlo. Others quickly followed. His first notable hit was Elisa e Claudio (1821) in Milan, the success of which took him to Vienna where he failed to make his musical mark. He found renewed success in Venice with Caritea, regina di Spagna (1826). There then followed a period during which Mercadante worked in Madrid, Lisbon and Cadiz, producing a number of operas, before returning to Italy in 1831. Four years later he was invited to Paris by Rossini to write an opera for the Theatre Italien. He responded with I briganti (1836). The opera flopped but Mercadante benefited from contact with the French capital’s thriving musical scene, whose social interaction is reflected in his Les Soirees Italiennes (available on Opera Rara ORR206). Meyerbeer’s Les Huguenots encouraged him in his next and most famous work, Il giuramento, a triumph in Milan in 1837 and the first of a clutch of works that ensured continued public esteem. Further successes followed. Becoming director of the Naples Conservatory in 1840 – a post for which Donizetti had at first been considered – he continued to compose busily, moving from romantic to neo-classical subjects. Later operas include 1846’s Orazi e Curiazi (available on Opera Rara ORC12), based on Corneille’s play Les Horaces. Having begun in the heyday of Rossini, Mercadante’s career extended well into the middle of Verdi’s. In fact, he was slightly embittered at being eclipsed by Verdi, on whom his music had some influence. He died in 1870, having put his name to close on sixty operas.
Born in 1763, Mayr was German by nationality but Italian by adoption. Raised in Bavaria, he later moved to Venice to pursue his musical career, where he was urged by the composer Niccolò Piccini to try his hand at opera. The result was Saffo (1794), presented during the Carnival at La Fenice. Its success led to many commissions. Mayr went on to win wider fame with Ginevra di Scozia (Opera Rara ORC23), written for the inauguration of the Teatro Nuovo, Trieste, in 1801. He helped found a music school in Bergamo where he taught and encouraged the young Donizetti. His operatic reputation spread through Italy, to Milan, Rome and Naples and by 1813 Mayr was one of the country’s most respected composers, his popularity hitting a peak with the premieres that year of Tamerlano (Milan), La rosa bianca e la rosa rossa (Genoa) and Medea in Corinto (Naples). The latter (available on Opera Rara ORC11) is widely looked upon as his masterpiece, making notable advances in continuity between numbers and vivid orchestration. After 1815, Mayr’s output lessened, partly the result of Rossini’s unstoppable success. By 1824, when he wrote his last opera, Demetrio, he had produced over sixty operas and his name was known across Europe. Mayr became blind in 1826 but remained musically active in Bergamo. His funeral in 1845 was attended by Verdi. Rossini would remark in 1856 that Mayr had ’perhaps earned his great name more by giving weight to the dramatic element than by creative facility’.
Massenet was a prolific, meticulous composer who wrote 30 or so operas, numerous oratorios and around 200 songs. Born in 1842, he entered the Paris Conservatoire aged just 11, going on to study with the composer Ambroise Thomas. In 1862, aged 20, he won the coveted Prix de Rome, spending three years in Italy, where he met Liszt. His first full-length opera came in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War, with Don César de Bazan, premiered at the Opéra-Comique in 1872, though his first real success came with the oratorio Marie-Magdeleine (1873), the title role sung by Pauline Viardot, sister of Maria Malibran. His first successful opera came in 1877 with Le Roi de Lahore, followed by Hérodiade (1881), based on the story of Salome. Three years later came the melodious tragedy Manon in 1884, perhaps his most enduring success, which picked up on Wagner in his use of leitmotivs and weightier brass. By this point, Massenet was France’s most popular opera composer, his light, lyrical style and remarkable gift for melody appealing to the French bourgeoisie, while never challenging them too much. A further three operas – Le Cid, Le Mage and Esclarmonde – didn’t match the success of Manon, but then came Werther in 1892, his masterpiece based on Goethe’s novel on the destructive power of obsessive love. Two years later he followed up with Thaïs, one of his most performed operas, its difficult title role written for the American soprano Sibyl Sanderson. The same year the one-act Le Portrait de Manon (available on Opera Rara, ORC47), was premiered at the Opéra-Comique, a work peppered with familiar quotations from Manon, written 10 years earlier. Massenet’s musical style was eclipsed by the success of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902, though in his last decade his work found a ready stage in Monte Carlo, far from the mainstream of French opera. His last success was Don Quichotte, premiered in 1910, two years before his death.
Italian composer and librettist Ruggero Leoncavallo (1857–1919) is best known today for his one-act verismo masterpiece Pagliacci, for which he also wrote the libretto.
Born in Naples to a well-to-do family – his father was a magistrate – he began studying at the conservatory there in 1866. In the late 1870s he wrote both music and libretto for his first opera Chatterton (first performed 1896). Around that time he moved to Egypt, but on the outbreak of the Anglo-Egyptian War in 1882 he moved to Marseilles and then to Paris, where he worked as a pianist in café-concerts. He found some success with the symphonic poem La Nuit de mai, and was also commissioned by Ricordi to write a planned trilogy Crepusculum (of which only the first part, I Medici, was completed). After the success of Mascagni’s Cavalleria rusticana he was inspired to write Pagliacci, which was a triumph on its 1892 premiere and led to stagings of Chatterton and I Medici. His La bohème in 1897 was overshadowed by the success of Puccini’s version the previous year. His last major success was Zazà in 1900. Around this time he was increasingly popular in Germany, leading to 1904’s Der Roland von Berlin. He was an early supporter of recording, and that year composed the song Mattinata for Enrico Caruso and the G&T Company. Towards the end of his life he turned increasingly towards operetta. His later operas included Goffredo Mameli (1916) and the incomplete Edipo re (1920).
Pagliacci was paired with Mascagni’s Cavallaria rusticana soon after its premiere and together they are probably the most enduringly popular operas of the verismo movement.
Charles Gounod is best known for his operas Faust and Romeo et Juliette and for his Ave Maria (1859). Except for concertos, he composed music in the major genres, but with varying success in the instrumental realm. Gounod was more at home in the vocal arena, particularly in opera and sacred music. Though his reputation began to fade even before he died, he is still generally regarded as a major figure in nineteenth century French music. Stylistically, he was a conservative whose influence nevertheless extended to Bizet, Saint-Saens, and Massenet. His works are tuneful, his vocal writing imaginative and orchestral scoring masterly.
He was born on 17 June 1818. His mother was a pianist who served as the young boy’s first teacher. While still in his youth she arranged for him to receive composition lessons from Anton Reicha. After Reicha’s death, Gounod began studies at the Paris Conservatory, where he won a Grand Prix in 1839 for his Cantata Fernand.
After further composition studies in Rome, where he focused on sixteenth century church music, particularly the works of Palestrina, he became deeply interested in religion and by 1845 was contemplating the priesthood. It was the 1859 opera Faust that after a slow start became his calling card. Mireille (1864) and especially Romeo et Juliette (1867) added to his reputation, not only in France but throughout Europe.
From 1870-1875 Gounod lived in England owing to the exigencies of the Franco-Prussian War. In his years there and in the period following his return to France, Gounod wrote much music, especially religious music, but never again attained the kind of success he experienced in the 1850s and ’60s. He died in St. Cloud on 18 October 1893.
Born in Bergamo in 1797, Donizetti studied under Mayr and had his first success in 1822 at the Teatro Argentina in Rome with Zoraida di Granata (original version available on Opera Rara ORC17). That success led to a contract in Naples and a number of well-received works, including Emilia di Liverpool (Opera Rara ORC8) and La romansesca e l’uomo nero(Opera Rara ORC19). After he broke with Naples, the tragic Anna Bolena (1830) won Donizetti international acclaim following its premiere in Milan. But his next opera for Milan, Ugo Conte di Parigi (Opera Rara ORC1), flopped in spite of inspired and energetic vocal writing. During the 1830s Donizetti’s style matured, a period that saw the production of such well-known works as L’elisir d’amore (1832) and Lucia di Lammermoor (1835) as well as Rosmonda d’Inghilterra (Opera Rara ORC13), L’assedio di Calais (Opera Rara ORC9), and the singular Maria de Rudenz(Opera Rara ORC16), an opera in which the heroine dies twice! Denied the directorship of the Naples Conservatory in favour of Mercadante, he left for Paris where he had mixed success. He wrote La fille du regiment (1840) but failed to finish his comic opera Ne m’oubliez pas (Opera Rara ORC4). In Milan he encountered censorship troubles with Maria Padilla (Opera Rara ORC6), premiered at La Scala in December 1841. The following year he triumphed in Vienna with Linda di Chamonix (Opera Rara ORC43) and was appointed Kapellmeister to the Austrian court. Donizetti’s final years saw the production of his comic masterpiece Don Pasquale (1843) and Maria di Rohan (Opera Rara ORC44), a powerful romantic drama. Dogged by ill-health, he returned to Bergamo in October 1847 where he died the following spring. Donizetti left 70-odd operas, among them the unperformed Gabriella di Vergy, a work rediscovered and given its world premiere recording by Opera Rara (ORC3).
The quintessential Romantic composer, Hector Berlioz was born in Grenoble in 1803, moving to Paris in the 1820s to study medicine at his father’s insistence – where he began to study music in earnest, spending much time at the Opéra. In 1826, he found the courage to leave medical school and study at the Paris Conservatoire. His first major composition was the innovative five-movement Symphonie fantastique of 1830, its use of a large orchestra indicative of Berlioz’s expansive musical palette. He won the Prix de Rome at his fourth attempt, taking him to Italy in 1831, whose culture exerted a lasting influence; other non-musical influences were the work of Shakespeare and the English actress Harriet Smithson, who the smitten composer married in 1833. In the ensuing years he produced a string of key works, including Harold in Italy(commissioned by Paganini), the Grande messe des morts (1837), featuring four brass bands, the poorly received opera Benvenuto Cellini (1838), the rather better received “dramatic symphony” Roméo et Juliette, the Grande symphonie funèbre et triomphale and the song cycle Les nuits d’été (available on Opera Rara, ORC47). Though Berlioz won the admiration of fellow composers such as Wagner and Liszt (who put on a Berlioz week in Weimar in 1852), his music failed to win wide recognition, particularly in his home country. He helped support himself through critical writing; his Treatise on Instrumentation (1844) proved influential. He later toured widely outside France, winning fame as a conductor. Further major works in his predominantly vocal output include La damnation de Faust (1846), the oratorio L’enfance du Christ (1854), the epic five-act opera Les Troyens (1856-8) and the opéra-comique Béatrice et Bénédict (1862), based on Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing and premiered in Germany. His final years were plagued by illness and a despair that his brilliantly innovative, if idiosyncratic, music never won the recognition it deserved.
Stuart Stratford read music at Trinity College, University of Cambridge, studying conducting with David Parry and later in Russia, at the Saint Petersburg State Conservatoire, Symphonic and Operatic Conducting Faculty, for three years. He was the Junior Fellow in Conducting at the Royal Northern College of Music, Manchester in 1999 and 2000.
He made his debut for English National Opera in 2004 and returned there in February 2010 with Philip Glass’s Satyagraha. For Opera North he has conducted Pagliacci, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and the new Jonathan Dove opera, Swanhunter.
He is a regular conductor at Opera Holland Park and has staged performances of Eugene Onegin,The Queen of Spades, Jenufa, Iolanta, Katya Kabanova, La Forza del Destino, L’amico Fritz and Rigoletto.
He has worked at the Almeida Opera Festival and has given many first performances of major new works: Tobias and the Angel (Dove), Ion (Param Vir), Kantan (Goehr), L’altra Euridice (Dove), Ariadne (Langer) and The Embalmer (Batistelli). He has staged The Turn of the Screw, Falstaff and Pagliacci for English Touring Opera, and Francesca Zambello’s La Boheme with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra in the Albert Hall.
For Opera Rara he made his debut recording with the Philharmonia Orchestra of Mercadante’s I Normanni a Parigi.
Studied at Cambridge. He joined Opera North as a resident conductor, and from 1983 to 1987 was music director of Opera 80. In 1992 he became music director of Almeida Opera. He made his debut at Glyndebourne with Cosi fan tutte in 1996 and the same year conducted Rossini’s Ricciardo e Zoraide at the Pesaro festival. He has guested at English National Opera and has made regular appearances at opera houses and concert halls throughout Europe, particularly in Spain where he has conducted the Spanish National Orchestra. His UK engagements include concerts with the Philharmonia, the Ulster Orchestra and Bournemouth Sinfonietta. As well as work for the Chandos label, he has made many recordings with the Philharmonia Orchestra, Academy of St Martin in the Fields and Royal Philharmonic Orchestra for Opera Rara.
Born of Australian parents in the USA, Sir Charles studied in Sydney and Prague. He was Conductor Laureate of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, Conductor Emeritus of the Welsh National Opera, Principal Guest Conductor Emeritus of the San Francisco Opera, Principal Guest Conductor of the Philharmonia Orchestra and from 1997-2003, Principal Guest Conductor of the Czech Philharmonic Orchestra, following his life-long association with both the orchestra and many aspects of Czech musical life. He has undertaken much research into performance practice of the 18th and 19th centuries and has conducted his own performing editions of the works of Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and Brahms with the world’s leading orchestras and opera houses.
Sir Charles received a CBE in 1974 and was knighted in 1979. He was honoured with the Medal of Merit from the Czech Republic in 1996, made a Companion of the Order of Australia in 1997 and made a Companion of Honour in the 2003 Queen’s Birthday Honours. In May 2005 he was presented with the Royal Philharmonic Society Gold Medal and in November 2005 was the first recipient of the Queen’s Medal for Music.
