Ferdinando Paër (1771-1839)
- Concerto (Re maggiore) per Organo con strumenti
Performers: Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini (1929-2017, organ); Orchestre de Chambre de Milan;
Tito Gotti (1927-2024, conductor)
Further info: Concerto Pour Orgue & Orchestre
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Italian composer. He studied with Francesco Fortunati and Gaspare
Ghiretti in Parma, producing his first stage work, the prose opera
'Orphee et Euridice', there in 1791. On July 14, 1792, he was appointed
honorary maestro di cappella to the court of Parma, bringing out his
opera 'Le astuzie amorose' that same year at the Teatro Ducale there.
His finest work of the period was 'Griselda, ossia La virtu at cimento'
(Parma, 1798). In 1797 he was appointed music director ofthe
Karnthnertortheater in Vienna. While there, he made the acquaintance of
Beethoven, who expressed admiration for his work. It was in Vienna that
he composed one of his finest operas, 'Camilla, ossia II sotteraneo'
(1799). After a visit to Prague in 1801, he accepted the appointment of
court Kapellmeister in Dresden. Three of his most important operas were
premiered there: 'I Fuorusciti di Firenze' 1802), 'Sargino, ossia
L'Allievo del Vamore' (1803), and 'Leonora, ossia L'amore conjugate'
(1804), a work identical in subject with that of Beethoven's Fidelio
(1805). In 1806 he resigned his Dresden post and accepted an invitation
to visit Napoleon in Posen and Warsaw. In 1807 Napoleon appointed him
his maitre de chapelle in Paris, where he also became director of the
Opera-Comique. Following the dismissal of Spontini in 1812, he was
appointed director of the Theatre-Italien. One of his most successful
operas of the period, 'Le Maitre de chapelle' (Paris, 1821), remained in
the repertoire in its Italian version until the early years of the 20th
century. Paer's tenure at the Theatre-Italien continued through the
vicissitudes of Catalani's management (1814-17) and the troubled joint
directorship with Rossini (1824-27). After his dismissal in 1827, he was
awarded the cross of the Legion d'honneur in 1828 and he was elected a
member of the Institute of the Academie des Beaux Arts in 1831. He was
appointed director of music of Louis Philippe's private chapel in 1832.
As a composer, he was a prolific composer, producing at least 55 operas,
most of them during the 25-year span from 1791 to 1816. His vocal
writing was highly effective, as was his instrumentation. He was one of
the central figures in the development of opera semiseria during the
first decade of the 19th century. Nevertheless, his operas have
disappeared from the active repertoire.
