Opera Composers

Bizet, Georges (1838–1875)

GEORGES BIZET (1838–1875)

Bizet’s most famous opera, Carmen, was not an instant hit. In later years it became a worldwide sensation, but Bizet, alas, did not live to witness its great success. He struggled with a variety of health issues, and died on the 3rd of June 1875, just three months after Carmen’s premiere in Paris on the 3rd of March. He was 36 years old. Bizet’s earlier operas include Les Pêcheurs de Perles (The Pearl Fishers) (first performed in 1863), La Jolie Fille de Perth (The Fair Maid of Perth) (1867), and Djamileh (1872).

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART (1756–1791)

If Mozart had confined himself to opera alone, he would be just as famous as other opera composers such as Richard Wagner, Giuseppe Verdi, and Giacomo Puccini. However, in contrast to these three giants of operatic history, Mozart excelled across a wide variety of other genres in both quantity and quality—chamber music, sonatas, concertos, symphonies, and masses and other music for the church.

Mozart collaborated with the librettist Lorenzo da Ponte (1749–1838) to produce three of his greatest operas: Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro) (first performed in 1786), Don Giovanni (1787), and Così Fan Tutte (Women Are All the Same) (1790). His other well-known operas include Idomeneo, Re di Creta (Idomeneus, King of Crete) (1781), Die Entführung aus dem Serail (The Abduction from the Seraglio) (1782), La Clemenza di Tito (The Clemency of Titus) (1791), and Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) (1791).

What a remarkable output for one who died at age 35! One account of Mozart’s extraordinary achievements is provided in the 1984 movie Amadeus (adapted from Peter Shaffer’s 1979 play Amadeus). Music scholar Philip Downs states that modern research places emphasis ‘much less upon the spontaneous genius who tossed off compositions with one hand while managing a billiard cue with the other, than … upon his incredible self-discipline in meeting commitments, for which there is a great deal of evidence’ (Classical Music, 1992). Downs concludes his chapter on Mozart with the following: ‘Does the modern view of the hard-working Mozart change or lessen the miracle of Mozart? Only partially: now we can recognize that the miracle of his genius was not based on the supernatural, but on the superhuman.’

GIACOMO PUCCINI (1858–1924)

At age 17, Puccini attended a performance of Verdi’s Aida in Pisa. It was a life-changing event, for the experience inspired him to become an opera composer. He studied at the Milan Conservatory, where his first opera, Le Villi (The Wilis), was performed in 1884. The publisher Giulio Ricordi purchased the rights to Le Villi, which was the beginning of a highly profitable lifelong relationship. (Wilis are the spirits of women who, betrayed by their betrothed, die before their wedding day. Any man—whether guilty or not—waylaid by the wilis may be forced by them to dance until death; thus does Anna’s unfaithful fiancé Roberto die in Le Villi, and so too the innocent gamekeeper Hilarion in the ballet Giselle.)

Puccini’s most successful operas are La Bohème (The Bohemians) (first performed in 1896), Tosca (1900), Madam Butterfly (1904), and Turandot (1926). When Puccini died in 1924 at the age of 65, he had not completed the music for Turandot; the ending was supplied by the composer Franco Alfano (1875–1954).

Puccini’s other operas include Manon Lescaut (1893), La Fanciulla del West (The Girl of the Golden West) (1910), La Rondine (The Swallow) (1917), Il Tabarro (The Cloak) (1918), Suor Angelica (Sister Angelica) (1918), and Gianni Schicchi (1918). The three 1918 works are one-act operas that comprise a triptych—Il Trittico—though they are seldom performed together.

The librettos for La Bohème, Tosca, and Madam Butterfly were written by Luigi Illica (1857–1919) and Giuseppe Giacosa (1847–1906), working closely with Puccini himself. ‘A man of exuberant and violent passions, also a quick and inventive worker, [Illica] was at his best at inventing strong characters and situations. He lacked Giacosa’s sensibility, but complemented him well’ (Rosenthal and Warrack, 1985). Giacosa took care of the libretto’s versification. Puccini, Illica and Giacosa became known as the ‘holy trinity’.

GIUSEPPE VERDI (1813–1901)

In the nineteenth century, Italian opera was dominated by Gioacchino Rossini (1792–1868), Gaetano Donizetti (1797–1848), Vincenzo Bellini (1801–1835), and Giuseppe Verdi (1813–1901).

Verdi’s career as an opera composer got off to a shaky start. His first opera, Oberto, Conte di San Bonifacio (Oberto, Count of San Bonifacio), was first performed in Milan in 1839, and was well received—it went on to be performed in Turin, Genoa, and Naples. However, his second opera, Un Giorno di Regno (King for a Day), was a failure in 1840, and it followed the deaths of his two children (in 1838 and 1839) and his first wife (1840).

Verdi almost gave up his operatic ambitions, but fortunately was persuaded to persevere. In the 1840s he composed—among others—Nabucco (Nebuchadnezzar) (first performed in 1842), I Lombardi (The Lombards) (1843), Ernani (1844), Attila (1846), Macbeth (1847), I Masnadieri (The Robbers) (1847), and Luisa Miller (1849). At the premiere of Nabucco, the character Abigaille was sung by the soprano Giuseppina Strepponi, whom Verdi lived with from 1847 and eventually married in 1859. Nabucco is noteworthy too for its chorus of the Hebrew slaves, ‘Va, pensiero, sull’ali dorate’ (Fly, my thoughts, on golden wings), in which they remember their homeland. ‘Suffering under Austrian rule, the nineteenth-century Milanese equated themselves with the Jews of the Old Testament and thus adopted the chorus as their anthem’ (Osborne, 2004). Whatever Verdi’s intentions were in producing such stirring music, ‘his sympathies were, understandably, with the Italian nationalist liberal cause, and he was by no means displeased to be thought of as the composer of the Risorgimento, the movement towards a united and free Italy’ (ibid.).

Verdi’s operas continued to flow during the 1850s: Stiffelio (1850), Rigoletto (1851), Il Trovatore (The Troubadour) (1853), La Traviata (The Fallen Woman) (1853), Les Vêpres Siciliennes (The Sicilian Vespers) (1855), Simon Boccanegra (1857), and Un Ballo in Maschera (A Masked Ball) (1859). There was also a revised version of Stiffelio titled Aroldo (1857).

Verdi’s final operas were La Forza del Destino (The Force of Destiny) (1862), Don Carlos (1867), Aida (1871), Otello (Othello) (1887), and—at the age of 79—Falstaff (1893). His famous Requiem was first performed in the Church of St Mark’s in Milan in 1874—Verdi composed it in memory of the poet and novelist Alessandro Manzoni. ‘The Requiem is often referred to as “Verdi’s greatest opera”. Certainly it is as intense and dramatic as anything he ever wrote’ (Steven Ledbetter, notes to Robert Shaw’s 1987 recording with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, TELARC CD-80152).