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Amilcare Ponchielli

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Amilcare Ponchielli
"Poor Ponchielli! Such a good man, such a fine musician." —Giuseppe Verdi, 1886

Amilcare Ponchielli (August 31, 1834 – January 17, 1886) was an Italian composer, largely of operas.

Biography

Born in Paderno Fasolaro, now Paderno Ponchielli, near Cremona, Ponchielli won a scholarship at the age of nine to study music at the Milan Conservatory, writing his first symphony by the time he was ten years old.

Two years after leaving the conservatory he wrote his first opera -- it was based on Alessandro Manzoni's great novel I promessi sposi (The Betrothed) -- and it was as an opera composer that he eventually found fame.

His early career was disappointing. Maneuvered out of a professorship at the Milan Conservatory that he had won in a competition, he took small-time jobs in small cities, and composed several operas,none successful at first. The turning point was the big success of the revised version of I promessi sposi in 1872, which brought him a contract with the music publisher G. Ricordi & Co. and the musical establishment at the Conservatory and at La Scala. The ballet Le due gemelle (1873) confirmed his success.

The following opera, I Lituani (The Lithuanians) (1874), was also well received, being performed later at Saint Petersburg (as Aldona - November 20, 1884). His best known opera is La Gioconda, which his librettist Arrigo Boito adapted from the same play by Victor Hugo that had been previously set by Mercadante (Il Giuramento, 1837) and Carlos Gomes (Fosca, 1873). It was first produced in 1876 and revised several times. The version that has become so popular today was first given in 1880.

In 1876 he started working on I mori di Valenza (the project dates back to 1873), an opera he never finished, although it was completed later by Arturo Cadore and performed posthumously in 1914.

After La Gioconda, Ponchielli wrote the monumental biblical melodrama in 4 acts Il figliuol prodigo (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, December 26, 1880) and Marion Delorme, from another play by Victor Hugo (Milan, Teatro alla Scala, March 17, 1885). In spite of their rich musical invention, neither of these operas met with the same success but exerted great influence on the composers of the rising generation, like Puccini, Mascagni and Giordano.

In 1881, Ponchielli was appointed maestro di cappella of the Bergamo Cathedral, and from the same year he was a professor of composition at the Milan Conservatory, where among his students were Giacomo Puccini and Pietro Mascagni.

He died in Milan and was interred there in the Cimitero Monumentale.

Although in his lifetime Ponchielli was very popular and influential, in introducing an enlarged orchestra and more complex orchestration, the only one of his operas regularly performed today is La Gioconda. It contains the great tenor romanza "Cielo e mar", a wonderful duet for tenor and baritone "Enzo Grimaldo", the soprano set-piece "Suicidio!" and the ballet music "The Dance of the Hours", known even to the non-musical from its use in Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), burlesques by Allan Sherman ("Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", 1963), in the children's record Gossamer Wump (released in 1949 by Capitol Records), and Spike Jones (1949), and, to a lesser degree, the 1966 Perrey and Kingsley song, "Countdown To 6."

Operas

  • Il sindaco babbeo, 1851 (a student project)
  • I promessi sposi, Cremona 1856. Ignored by the press.
  • Bertrando del Bornio, 1858 (scheduled for Turin but not performed)
  • La Savoiarda, 1861; revised as Lina, 1877
  • Roderico, re dei Goti, 1863
  • I promessi sposi, Milan (Teatro Dal Verme) 1872. Success in a revised version.
  • Il parlatore eterno, 1873 (a monologue for baritone)
  • I Lituani, 1874; revised, 1875
  • La Gioconda, Milan 1876; Created by Julian Gayarre; revised versions 1876 and 1880
  • Il figliuol prodigo, Milan 1880. Created by Francesco Tamagno
  • Marion Delorme, Milan 1885; Created by Francesco Tamagno; revised Brescia, 1885.

Incomplete operas

  • I Mori di Valenza (left incomplete; completed by Arturo Cadore and premiered in Monte Carlo Mar. 17, 1914); Created by Giovanni Martinelli.
  • Olga

Bibliography

  • Kaufman: Annals of Italian Opera: Verdi and his Major Contemporaries; Garland Publishing, New York and London, 1990. (contains premiere casts and performance histories of Ponchielli's operas)
  • Various authors: Amilcare Ponchielli; Nuove Edizioni, Milan, 1985
  • Various authors: Amilcare Ponchielli 1834-1886, Cremona, 1984
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