Gaetano Crivelli

Gaetano Crivelli (1768, Brescia, Italy - 1836, Brescia), was a famous Italian tenor.

Even though not properly born in Bergamo, but in the neighbouring Brescia, Crivelli can be rightfully regarded as one of the founders of that incredible sort of Bergamo tenor school which, starting from Giacomo David and going along through such eminent figures as Giovanni David, Andrea Nozzari, Domenico Donzelli and Marco Bordogni, would eventually culminate in the out-standing name of Giovanni Battista Rubini.

Crivelli, who was a baritone-type tenor in the eighteenth century’s Italian manner, made his first public appearance rather late, at the age of 28, in his native town and was later on several other Italian theatres’ stages, until his début at Milan’s La Scala, in 1805, in the première of Mayr’s opera Eraldo ed Emma. Crivelli moved then abroad, to Paris (where he executed, in 1811, at the Théâtre des Italiens his probably most congenial opera, Pirro by Giovanni Paisiello), and then, with less success, to London. Notwithstanding the lack of success, he made England an important bequest, his son Domenico who would settle definitively there, firstly as a singer, and who would become later, as a singing teacher, a protagonist of the contemporary English musical life.

After getting back to Italy, Gaetano's career went by for a long time, above all in the northern theatres, as again at La Scala, where he sang, among others, Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, or at Venice’s La Fenice, where he took part, by Giuditta Pasta’s side, to the first performance of Nicolini’s La sposa di Granata, and, again, in 1821, by the side, this time, of another contemporary prima-donna, Francesca Maffei Festa, to the première of the rising star Saverio Mercadante’s opera, Andronico.

Having had a long lasting career, Crivelli did not distinguish himself so much for his coloratura virtuosity, as for his capability to exploit, at the best, his baritone-style tenor qualities: the quivering and passionate accent and the expressive vigour. He gave thus a remarkable contribute to the first nineteenth century Belcanto revival that would soon flow into singing’s Rossini golden age, in which, yet, maybe out of his not acrobatic characteristics, he could not finally play any significant role.

Sources

• Caruselli, Salvatore (ed.), Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica, Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., Roma, ad nomen