Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785)
- Concerto (Si bemolle maggiore) per il Fagotto
Performers: Sergio Azzolini (bassoon); L’Opera Stravagante; Ivano Zanenghi (conductor)
Painting: Follower of Jan Josef Horemans (1682-1759) - A scene with a company making music in a loggia
Further info: Baldassarre Galuppi (1706-1785) - Dixit Dominus
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Italian composer and violinist. Although largely self-trained as a
youth, a catastrophic failure of his first opera, Gli amici rivali, at
the age of 16 directed him to receive professional training from
Benedetto Marcello and Antonio Lotti in Venice. By 1729 he had attained a
reputation in the city as a facile and progressive composer of opera,
finding employment in various opera houses as a continuo player. In 1738
he was appointed as the musical director of the Ospedale dei
Mendicanti, later traveling to London to perform his operas. By 1745,
beginning with La forza d’amore, he started writing comic operas, and
only four years later he began collaborating with Carlo Goldoni on a
series of comic works for the Venetian carnival. Although he continued
to receive a salary from the Mendicante and as assistant maestro di
cappella at St. Mark’s, he concentrated almost exclusively on
commissions for various cities in Europe. In 1762 he was appointed as
maestro di coro at St. Mark’s as well as musical director at the
Ospedale degli Incurabili, and two years later he traveled to St.
Petersburg to produce operas at the court of Catherine II, including
Ifigenia in Tauride. Upon his return to Italy in 1768, he turned toward
the composition of sacred music. Charles Burney considered Galuppi an
“intelligent and agreeable gentleman,” the most original of all of the
Italian composers met during his journey. He is one of the earliest
composers to develop the ensemble finale, and his use of colorful
orchestration was praised by Burney, among others. His writing showed a
special gift for good melody and knowledge of vocal writing. He set much
of Pietro Mestastasio’s texts to music, and his collaboration with
Goldoni produced popular comic works, such as La Diavolessa (1755), Il
mondo alla roversa and Il mondo della luna (1750), and La Cantarina
(1756), many of which were produced successfully all over Europe. He
also delved into historical opera with Gustavo I (1740, to a serious
text by Goldoni), based upon the figure of Swedish king Gustaf Wasa. In
all, Galuppi wrote 90 sonatas for keyboard, seven concertos “à 4,” 106
operas, 27 oratorios, 19 cantatas, several Masses, and a host of smaller
sacred works, some of which were formerly attributed to Antonio Vivaldi
and Johann Adolph Hasse. His son, Antonio Galuppi (c.1740-1780), was a
librettist who supplied texts for at least four operas composed by his
father.
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