Project Category: Composer

Born on 18th July 1821, Pauline Viardot was the younger sister of Maria Malibran. Trained firstly by her father, and then by Liszt, Pauline made her operatic debut, like her sister, in her Majesty’s Theatre London at the age of 18, singing Desdemona in Rossini’s Otello. In 1840 Pauline married Louis Viardot, the director of the Théâtre Italien in Paris. A devoted husband Louis provided her with support and security until long after the end of her career in 1863. During retirement Pauline became a renowned teacher and composer, writing two books of songs, settings of Russian poetry, plus verses by Turgenev. Turgenev also wrote libretti for a series of operettas, set to music by Pauline, which were later staged in the theatre that he had built in his villa. The first was Trop de Femmes (1867), followed by Le Dernier Sorcier. In 1871 Pauline moved to Paris, which was to be home for the rest of her life. Here she nursed both Louis and Turgenev until their deaths in 1883. Pauline herself died peacefully on May 18 1910. Her nurse during this period, Mlle de Nogueiras, was the dedicatee of Cendrillon (Opera Rara ORR212).

Born in 1813 in Roncole, Verdi became town music master in Busseto and married Margherita Barezzi, his patron’s daughter (their two children died in infancy). His wife died during the composition of Un giorno di regno (which was a total failure) and it was only with the performances of Nabucco in 1842 that his international reputation was sealed. His operatic models were Rossini, Mercadante and Donizetti. His expressive range was enormous reflected in Rigoletto, La traviata and Il trovatore. He married the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi in 1859 with whom he had been living for several years. He was to write Les Vêpres Siciliennes (1855) and Don Carlos (1867) for the Paris Opera and also for Paris a revised version of his 1847 version of Macbeth (1865). For St Petersburgh he wrote La forza del destino in 1862. Politically active in his middle years he was persuaded by Cavour to stand for the national parliament, was elected and eventually became a senator. The great works, The Requiem, Aida, Otello and Falstaff crowned a staggering musical achievement. When Verdi died in 1901, 28,000 people lined the streets of Milan for his funeral.

Born 5 August 1811, the son of a musician, Thomas began to play the piano at an early age and in 1828 entered the Paris Conservatoire. In 1832 he won the Prix de Rome and subsequently spent three years in Italy. His first opera, the one-act comedy La double echelle, produced by the Opéra-Comique in 1837, scored a considerable success and received 247 performances. In 1849 he wrote his first undisputed triumph, Le caïd, which by 1900 had received over 400 performances. His greatest success was Mignon (1866), one of the most popular works in the history of opera, with over 1200 performances by the end of the century. In 1871 Thomas succeeded Auber as director of the Conservatoire, a post he held until his death in 1896.

Born in Pesaro in 1792, Rossini studied in Bologna and went on to become the dominant force of Italian opera in the first half of the nineteenth century. Between 1806 and 1830 he wrote approaching forty operas. Among his early successes were Tancredi (1813), and the comic operas L’Italiana in Algeri (1813) and Il turco in Italia (1814). In 1815 he was engaged in Naples by the impresario Domenico Barbaja. Among the works that resulted during this rich period were Elisabetta regina d’Inghilterra (Opera Rara ORC22), Armida, Mose in Egitto and Ricciardo e Zoraide (Opera Rara ORC14). Otello, in 1816, had its tragic ending changed for the Rome revival, with Otello realising in time that his jealousy is mistaken (both versions can be heard on Opera Rara ORC18). Two of his greatest successes were written for Rome, his masterpiece Il barbiere di Siviglia followed in 1817 by the premiere of La Cenerentola. In 1819, La donna del lago (Opera Rara ORC34), based on The Lady of the Lake, is indicative of the growing fascination across Europe with the writings of Walter Scott. Rossini’s Italian career culminated with Semiramide in 1823, after which he moved to Paris. Here he injected fresh life into the Théâtre Italien, adapted several of his works to French taste, wrote Il viaggio a Reims (1825) and Le Comte Ory (1828), then brought his operatic career to a triumphant close with his masterpiece Guillaume Tell (1829). That was his last stage work, from a man still in his thirties. Rossini lived for another 39 years. Among his later compositions were two notable religious works, the Stabat Mater and Petite messe solennelle – the latter coming four years before his death in 1868.

Born in Naples in 1809, he studied at the Naples Conservatory from 1818 where his teachers included Zingarelli, Pietro Raimondi and, in their capacity as Maestrini, his own brother (Luigi Ricci) and Bellini. His first production, Il Colonello, given at the Treatro Fondo Naples in 1835, was jointly composed with his brother and was the first of many collaborations. In 1838 he composed La prigione di Edimburgo (Opera Rara, ORR228), an opera semiseria drawn from Scott’s The Heart of Midlothianwhich proved to be one of his most sensational successes.  In 1841 he had a double success with Luigi Rolla (Florence), written for and dedicated to the tenor Napoleone Moriani, and Corrado d’Altamura (Milan), based on the same plot as Verdi’s Oberto, conte di San Bonifacio and widely considered to be his masterpiece in the tragic genre. Like his brother he succeeded mainly in comedy, to which he devoted himself exclusively after 1847. Two years after Crispino e la comare (1850, Venice), his final collaboration with Luigi, Federico triumphed in Vienna with Il marito e l’amante. Following the failure of Il paniere d’amore (1853) he accepted the post of maître de chapelle of the imperial theatres at St Petersberg, but in 1869 left Russia for Paris where he enjoyed an Indian summer of popularity as a composer of Opéras bouffes. In 1876 Ricci retired to Conegliano in the Veneto, where he died the following year leaving his last opera, Don Quichotte, uncompleted.

Born in Parma in 1771 Paer received his first musical instruction from his father Giulio and later studied with the court maestro di cappella Gian Francesco Fortunati. He was a prolific composer, producing at least 55 operas, most of them during the 25-year span from 1791-1816. Paer’s first stage work was Orphée et Euridice on a French text with spoken dialogue and his earliest Italian opera was Circe. In 1797 he moved to Vienna to become musical director of the Kärntnertortheater and began a series of foreign appointments that was to lead him to achieve his greatest success outside Italy. In 1801 he accepted the post of court Kapellmeister in Dresden, where for the court theatre he wrote in successive year three of his most important works: I fuorusciti (1802), Sargino (1803) and Leonora (1804). He later went on to become the director of the Opéra-Comique and later musical director of the Théâtre Italien in Paris, which from 1824-26 he yielded his directorship of the Théâtre Italien to Rossini, who agreed to assume the position only if his older colleague were not displaced. As a person Paer was disliked by many of his contemporaries, yet he won over contemporary audiences with his engaging music. His skill at achieving virtually immediate success in several operatic centres of contracting character – Parma and other Italian cities, Vienna, Dresden and Paris – demonstrates his ability to adapt his style to varying tastes.

Pacini was hugely prolific. Born in the Sicilian town of Catania in 1796, he wrote his first opera, Don Pomponio, while a teenager. A spate of works followed. He produced a dozen comedies in four years, then won recognition with Adelaide e Comingio in 1817. Moving to Rome in 1820, he wrote La gioventu di Enrico V in just 24 days for the opening of the Carnival season. Pacini found time for some sub-contracting work too, helping out Rossini, who had fallen behind with work on Matilde Shabran: Pacini obliged with three numbers. Something of a social climber, he also squeezed in time for a liaison with Napoleon’s sister, Princess Pauline Borghese. In 1824 he moved south to Naples, taking over as music director of the Teatro San Carlo on a contract that required two operas a year. By 1830 Pacini had produced more than 40 operas in 16 years, yet faced by stiff competition from Bellini and Donizetti took a strategic decision and retired to Viareggio, where he set up a music school and stopped writing operas. In 1839, he re-emerged, enjoying an Indian summer with the triumph in Naples of Saffo, arguably his masterpiece and displaying a more individual, mature style. Further successes followed: La fidanzata corsa, Medea and, in 1843, Maria regina d’Inghilterra (Opera Rara ORC15). The success of the latter saw the composer crowned on stage with laurels and accompanied after the second performance by military bands and lighted torches to the cries of ’Viva Pacini’. In later years he was eclipsed by Verdi, his last real success being Il saltimbanco (1858). He died in 1867.

Born in Cologne in 1819, Offenbach was the seventh of ten children. His family moved to Paris in 1833 where he studied cello at the Conservatoire. He joined the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique in 1837, surviving as a virtuoso performer throughout the 1840s. During this time, however, he failed to realise his greater ambition as a composer and find a stage for his work. After five years as the conductor at the Théâtre Francais, Offenbach’s fortunes turned in 1855 when, during the World Exhibition in Paris, he hired the Théâtre Marigny in the Champs-Elysees, renamed it the Bouffes-Parisiens, and put on a successful season of operettas into which he inserted some of his own works, including Les deux aveugles and Le violoneux. In 1858, he triumphed with his first full-length operetta, Orphee aux enfers, launching the cancan on an unsuspecting world, and making him famous in France. In 1861 he gave up directing the Bouffes-Parisiens and settled into a period that produced a string of successes: La vie parisienne (1866), La belle Helene (1864), Barbe-Bleue (1866), La Grande-Duchesse de Gerolstein (1867) and La Périchole (1868). It was during this time that he composed Robinson Crusoe (Opera Rara ORC7), an opera comique, with the role of Man Friday written for the young mezzo Celestine Galli-Marie, who later became Bizet’s first Carmen.

Meyerbeer came from a family of wealthy Jewish bankers. Born in 1791 in Berlin, he studied under Abbe Vogler (Weber was a fellow student), developing into an accomplished pianist. Meyerbeer’s first attempts at writing opera met with failure and, taking Salieri’s advice, he moved in 1816 to Italy, where his career took off. Within months he had written the first of six Italian-style operas and found himself being compared with Rossini. In 1824, the triumph of Il crociato in Egitto (available on Opera Rara ORC10) took him to Paris, where he based himself until his death in 1864. He established his position as a central figure in French grand opera with a series of successes, among them Robert le Diable (1831) and Les Huguenots (1836) with their historical subjects, vast crowd scenes and lavish production values. No slouch at giving the public what it wanted, Meyerbeer followed up with Le Prophète (1849), which features a skating ballet, coronation and a huge explosion. A shift of style from the broad canvas of grand opera into opera-comique saw the production of L’Etoile du Nord (1854), originally composed as a vehicle for the Swedish soprano Jenny Lind. That was followed in 1859 by Le Pardon de Plo’rmel or Dinorah – the first complete recording of which was made by Opera Rara (ORC5). At the age of 67, Meyerbeer had shown that he could charm as well as thrill audiences.