Vintage Italian postcard, 1930s. B.F.F. Edit. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), No. 744.
Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi, born Joseph Fortunin Francesco Verdi on 10 October 1813 in Roncole and died on 27 January 1901 in Milan, was an Italian Romantic composer. His work, composed mainly of operas that combine melodic power with psychological and legendary depth, is one of the most important in the history of musical theatre.
Verdi was one of the most influential Italian opera composers of the 19th century, his influence comparable to that of Gioachino Rossini, Vincenzo Bellini, Gaetano Donizetti and Giacomo Puccini. His works are frequently performed in operas all over the world, and some of his themes have long been part of popular culture, transcending the boundaries of the genre, such as "La donna è mobile" from Rigoletto, the "Brindisi" from La traviata, the "Va, pensiero" from Nabucco and the "Triumphal March" from Aida. Verdi's operas still dominate the operatic repertoire a century and a half after their creation. Although not very politically committed, he nevertheless authorised the use of his image and his works in the process of reunification of the Italian peninsula and remains, alongside Giuseppe Garibaldi and Camillo Cavour, an emblematic figure of the Risorgimento.
On 17 November 1839, Verdi's first opera was performed at La Scala: Rochester, by now renamed Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio. It was fairly successfully received (14 performances) and the music publisher Giovanni Ricordi, bought the rights to the opera and published it. Verdi was commissioned to write a comic opera, Un giorno di regno. During the time he was working on this opera (1840), his wife died. Un giorno di regno became a fiasco, and Verdi decided never to write another note. He rented a cheap room in the old part of Milan. Months later, the great impresario of La Scala, Bartolomeo Merelli, persuaded Verdi to write Nabucco after all. The story goes that Verdi first threw the libretto off in a drift, but when it accidentally fell open on the page of the opera's famous slave chorus, he couldn't get rid of the text 'Va Pensiero sull' ali dorate', 'Fly thoughts, on golden wings'.
The 1842 performance of Nabucco at La Scala became a huge success and forever established Verdi's name among those of other great composers. A leading singer of the time, the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, performed the role of Abigail. The singer would become Verdi's life companion, but he did not marry her until long after the death of his first wife. I Lombardi (Milan, 11 February 1843) was also a success, partly because of the political situation (see below), as was later Ernani, at the Teatro La Fenice in Venice. The following year, Giovanna d'Arco and La forza del destino confirmed his fame, but as he found the performance at the Scala underwhelming, he asked Ricordi to stop having this work performed there. The premieres of Attila, Alzira and Macbeth were held in other Italian cities. I masnadieri was first performed in London. While Milan was lost and then recaptured by the Austrians, Verdi wrote Il corsaro, La battaglia di Legnano, and Luisa Miller, and began work on the never-completed Manon Lescaut. After polemics for his Stiffelio, he triumphed in Venice in 1851 with Rigoletto (after Victor Hugo) and in Rome in 1853 with Il trovatore. In contrast, the first soirées of La traviata became a fiasco.
Other famous operas followed in this period, namely Les vêpres siciliennes/ I vespri siciliani (Paris), Aroldo (a revision of Stiffelio), Simon Boccanegra (at the Teatro La Fenice), and the censored Un ballo in maschera. Verdi was then involved in the Italian unification and worked on minor revisions of earlier works until 1866, the year Don Carlos (after Schiller) was first seen in Paris. On the occasion of the 1862 World's Fair in London, he wrote the cantata Inno delle nazioni. In 1872, Aida was first performed at the Scala, with great success. It was originally thought that the opera was written by Verdi on the occasion of the opening of a new opera house in Cairo or for the opening of the Suez Canal. However, this is not true: Verdi wrote Aida for the Egyptian kedive (viceroy of Egypt) by order. This order established the subject of the opera and aimed to become a work that the Egyptians could adopt as a national opera. Around this time, problems arose in Verdi's relationship with the Ricordi's, who were suspected of far-reaching financial irregularities. Nevertheless, it was a suggestion by Giulio Ricordi that led to Otello, released in 1887, which is considered the perfect Italian tragic opera. After more revisions of earlier work, often in collaboration with the composer and librettist Arrigo Boito, Falstaff followed.
Verdi's works often contain barely veiled expressions of support for Italian nationalism. The "Chorus of the Jewish Slaves" (= "the Slave Chorus") from his opera Nabucco, for example, also known as Va, Pensiero was and is often claimed to be a good Italian national anthem. The name Verdi was used as an acronym of Vittorio Emanuele Re D'Italia (= Victor Emanuel, King of Italy). Partisans launched a campaign to ensure that this King of Sardinia could recapture Milan from the Austrian occupants, a campaign known as "Viva V.E.R.D.I." due to strict Austrian censorship. ("Long live V.E.R.D.I."). The composer was aware of this use of his name and is believed to have approved of it. His work I Lombardi also refers to political events.
After completing his "Casa di Riposo Giuseppe Verdi", a retirement home for impecunious artists, he died of a stroke in Milan in 1901 at the age of 88. His funeral had a huge turnout: the Slave Chorus "Va, Pensiero" was sung by tens of thousands of people in the streets during his funeral, with around a quarter of a million mourners paying their respects to Verdi, one of the most important representatives of Italian music. Apart from operas, Verdi also composed quite a few religious works. Mention should be made of the Requiem (1874), composed on the death of the poet Alessandro Manzoni, and the Quattro Pezzi Sacri.
(Sources: French and Dutch Wikipedia)
Verdi has been the subject of several film and stage works. These include the 1938 film Giuseppe Verdi directed by Carmine Gallone, starring Fosco Giachetti, and the 1982 miniseries, The Life of Verdi, directed by Renato Castellani, where Verdi was played by Ronald Pickup, with narration by Burt Lancaster in the English version. Luchino Visconti was a big Verdi lover, which he not only expressed in his opera stagings (he staged La traviata even three times), but also in his films. Senso (1954) opens with the aria of "Di quella pira..." of Verdi's Il trovatore, staged at the real Teatro La Fenice in Venice, in which the opera arouses the rebellious behaviour of the audience present, while in Visconti's Il Gattopardo (1963) the local brass-band plays Verdi's "Noi siamo zingarelle" from La traviata, followed by the aria "Amami, Alfredo" from the same opera on the church organ. All this examples link Verdi to the Risorgimento, even if with a critical view. Even in Visconti's first film, Ossessione (1943), Bragana (Juan de Landa), wins a local opera contest with his performance of the song of Germont from La traviata, "Di Provenza, il mar, il suol".
As many operas by Verdi were based on existing sources such as Shakespeare''s plays (Othello, Macbeth), it is difficult to define which films were adapted from Verdi's operas and which rather from the preceding sources. Already in the era of early cinema, early sound shorts like the German Biophon films by Messter were made, e.g. Othello (1907) with Franz, Henny and Rosa Porten, while one year earlier Mario Caserini and Gaston Velle did an adaptation of the same Shakespeare play, Otello, with Ubaldo Maria Del Colle as Othello and Maria Caserini as Desdemona. In Brazil many short sound films with Verdi arias were made before 1910, e.g. by Alberto Botelho. IMDB counts that since 1900 some 486 films, TV series and TV films have used Verdi's music.
Tags: composer music musica lirica opera Oper male portrait Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana B.F.F. Ballerini & Fratini 1930s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Celebrity Costume compositore POstale Postkaart Postal Ansichtskarte Briefkarte musique Musik history Giuseppe Verdi Verdi conductor dirigent
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Vintage Italian postcard, 1930s. B.F.F. Edit. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), No. 785.
Ottorino Respighi, born in Bologna on 9 July 1879 and died in Rome on 18 April 1936, was an Italian composer, musicologist and conductor.
Born in Bologna, Ottorino Respighi received his first violin and piano lessons from his father Giuseppe, a local piano teacher. Ottorino went on to study violin with Federico Sarti at the Bologna Music High School, and composition with Giuseppe Martucci and Luigi Torchi. Respighi then studied composition briefly with Rimsky-Korsakov in Russia, which had a major influence on his work. He also took composition lessons from Max Bruch, although others contest this. In 1905, Respighi completed his first opera, the comedy Re Enzo, followed by e.g. .Semirâma (1910), La bella addormentata nel bosco (1922), Belfagor (1922), La fiamma (1934), and his last opera, Lucrezia Borgia (1938). Yet, in the public mind Respighi has remained better known for two of his orchestral works, Fontane di Roma (1916) and Pini di Roma (1924), both split up in four parts that accentuate the locations and their respective atmospheres in and around Rome. Respighi composed a much lesser known third part as well, Feste di Roma (1928).
In 1919 Respighi married one of his former students, the singer Elsa Olivieri-Sangiacomo. He died of endocarditis at the age of 56 at his home I Pini, "The Pines" in via della Camilluccia. He was buried in the monumental cemetery of the Carthusian monastery in Bologna.
(Source: French Wikipedia)
Tags: composer music musica lirica opera Oper male portrait Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana B.F.F. Ballerini & Fratini 1930s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Celebrity Costume compositore POstale Postkaart Postal Ansichtskarte Briefkarte musique Musik history Ottorino Respighi Respighi conductor dirigent
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Vintage Italian postcard, 1930s. B.F.F. Edit. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), No. 727.
Richard Georg Strauss, born on 11 June 1864 in Munich and died on 8 September 1949 in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, was a German composer and conductor.
Richard Strauss was above all an outstanding orchestral specialist and connoisseur; his few chamber works are rarely performed, apart from the melodies for piano and voice, symphonic poems and operas that form the core of his oeuvre. If his name is known to the general public, it is above all thanks to the three operas Salome, Elektra and Der Rosenkavalier, and also thanks to the symphonic poems Thus Spoke Zarathustra, Death and Transfiguration, Till the Mischievous and Don Juan.
The surname Strauss, which means "bouquet", is extremely common in German-speaking countries, and there is no family link between the Bavarian Richard Strauss and the two Johann Strausses (father and son) from Vienna (Austria), nicknamed the "kings of the waltz". The few waltzes composed by Richard Strauss appear in his works only as a nod to Viennese tradition, as a reference to an earlier period (for example in the operas Der Rosenkavalier and Arabella) or as an element connoting eroticism and sensuality.
(Source: French Wikipedia(
Tags: composer music musica lirica opera Oper male portrait Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana B.F.F. Ballerini & Fratini 1930s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Celebrity Costume compositore POstale Postkaart Postal Ansichtskarte Briefkarte musique Musik history Richard Strauss Riccardo Strauss Strauss German Deutsch conductor dirigent
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Vintage Italian postcard, 1930s. B.F.F. Edit. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), No. 749.
Ruggero Leoncavallo (23 April 1857 Naples - 9 August 1919 Montecatini Terme) was an Italian composer, best known for his opera Pagliacci (1892).
Although Ruggero Leoncavallo's name is still associated with Pagliacci, his first opera premiered in 1892 and considered one of the manifestos of verismo, his biography is full of legends of his own making. What we do know for certain is that he was the son of a magistrate, that he studied at the Naples Conservatory, that he took lessons from the poet Giosuè Carducci in Bologna, that he travelled to Egypt before arriving in Paris, where he played the piano to earn a living in concert halls. In Paris, Leoncavallo became friends with Jules Massenet and the baritone Victor Maurel. He had already written Chatterton in 1876, which was not premiered until 1896, but it was in 1892 that his talent shone through with Pagliacci, whose universal success opened up many new horizons for him.
In addition to his operas I Medici (1893), Chatterton (1896), La Bohème (1897, not to be confused with Puccini's 1896 version) and Zazà (1900), Leoncavallo was thus able to tackle other genres: operetta, music drama and symphonic poems such as La Nuit de mai for tenor and orchestra, inspired by the poem by Alfred de Musset, first performed on 3 April 1887 in Paris, and Séraphitus Séraphîta, a symphonic poem based on Séraphîta by Honoré de Balzac, first performed in Milan at La Scala in 1894. The artist sometimes received commissions, such as Der Roland von Berlin by Wilhelm II (1904), and he began composing operettas, before returning to his initial style: Œdipe Roi (1920), which he never saw performed, as he died a year earlier. Hiis song Mattinata (1904) was popularized by Enrico Caruso.
Leoncavallo was a member of the Giovane Scuola. In 1895, in Milan, he married the French singer Marie Rose Jean, known as Berthe Rambaud, born in Carpentras in August 1863. A large part of his estate is now preserved at the Fondo Leoncavallo in Locarno. The Leoncavallo Museum in nearby Brissago preserves the memory of the composer, who was made an honorary citizen of the municipality in 1904.
(Source: French Wikipedia)
Tags: composer music musica lirica opera Oper male portrait Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana B.F.F. Ballerini & Fratini 1930s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Celebrity Costume compositore POstale Postkaart Postal Ansichtskarte Briefkarte musique Musik history Ruggero Leoncavallo Leoncavallo conductor dirigent
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Vintage Italian postcard, 1930s. B.F.F. Edit. (Ballerini & Fratini, Firenze), No. 728.
Pietro Mascagni, born in Livorno on 7 December 1863 and died in Rome on 2 August 1945, was one of the most important Italian opera composers of the turn of the 20th century.
Mascagni was born in Livorno in 1863. His father was a baker, and his mother died when he was still very young. His father wanted him to study law, but Pietro went to study music at the Milan Conservatory, where Ponchielli was his teacher and Puccini his co-disciple. He abandoned his studies and became the director of a small operetta troupe. He moved to a small town, Cerignola, where he became a music teacher and conductor of the small local orchestra. The young composer lived in relative poverty until he won the Sonzogno competition with his most famous opera: Cavalleria rusticana (1889), based on an argument by Giovanni Verga. It was on the day he began this little opera that his first daughter was born. This marital bliss gave him the strength to write the work in around twenty days. Cavalleria was performed in 1890, and was a stunning success: in less than a year, Mascagni was famous the world over. Even Mahler was enthusiastic, whereas he, for example, sneered at a performance of Puccini's La Bohème. This illustrates the fact that during his youth, Mascagni would be as highly esteemed, if not more so, than Puccini. This was the first manifestation of musical verism. Other operas followed, the most famous of which were: L'amico Fritz (1891) and Iris (1898), considered his best opera and still performed in Italy.
(Source: French Wikipedia)
Tags: composer music musica lirica opera Oper male portrait Italian Italy Italia Italiano Italiana B.F.F. Ballerini & Fratini 1930s Vintage Vedette Postcard Postkarte Carte Cartolina Carte Postale Celebrity Costume compositore POstale Postkaart Postal Ansichtskarte Briefkarte musique Musik history Pietro Mascagni Mascagni conductor dirigent
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