Niccolò Piccinni (1728-1800)
- Sinfonia (overture) 'Iphigenie en Tauride' (1781)
Performers: Austrian TonkuenstIer Orchestra; Ernst Maerzendorfer (1921-2009, conductor)
Further info: The Great Rivals
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Italian composer. Although his father was a musician and his mother the
sister of the composer Latilla, he was destined originally for the
church. His precocious musical talent, however, would not be suppressed.
Most of the information about his early years comes from La Borde. Thus
Piccinni is said to have entered the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples
in May 1742 and to have studied there until 1754, under Leo (1744), and
then under Durante, who had a special affection for him. In 1754
Piccinni embarked on a career of almost exclusively operatic
composition. Beginning with comic works, as was the custom, he quickly
gained a following in Naples, where the public had formerly been devoted
to the opere buffe of Logroscino. It was the first of several
competitive situations that were later to overshadow the career of this
amiable and generous man. The extent of his early success and
recognition of his promise are reflected in his soon being invited to
compose an opera seria, his first, for the Teatro S Carlo. This work,
Zenobia (1756), was also a success and was followed by others, so that
in the next few years his output was balanced almost evenly between the
serious and comic genres. In 1756 he married one of his singing pupils,
the 14-year-old Vincenza Sibilla, who sang his music exquisitely in
private but never appeared on the stage. The extent of Piccinni’s
labours in Italy, his resistance to Burney’s inducements to visit
England, and his subsequent reluctant move to Paris, were dictated by
his desire to obtain the best conditions possible to support seven
children. The rapid growth of Piccinni’s reputation is indicated by the
commission from Rome in 1758 for Alessandro nelle Indie. Piccinni
produced new works in Rome at every Carnival up to 1773 except that of
1767. His fertility became legendary in a period when prolific operatic
composition was by no means unusual. Burney reported Sacchini’s
assertion that Piccinni had written 300 operas.
Piccinni remained in Naples, where Burney met him in 1770 and called him
‘a lively agreeable little man, rather grave for an Italian so full of
fire and genius’. He was second maestro di cappella under Manna at
Naples Cathedral, taught singing and on 16 February 1771 was appointed
second organist of the royal chapel. Yet from 1758 to 1773 he produced
over 30 operas in Naples, over 20 in Rome and others in all the main
Italian cities. This period represents the first peak in his
achievement. In 1774 the Neapolitan ambassador there, Caraccioli, had
commended Piccinni to the court, and negotiations began. A delay was
imposed by the death of Louis XV, but in 1776, with the promise of an
annual ‘gratification’, revenue from his operas and employment by the
court and nobility, Piccinni left Naples (16 November). He reached Paris
on the last day of the year, suffering cruelly from the cold, knowing
no French and with little idea of what was in store. In the subsequent
squabbles of the ‘Gluckists’ and the ‘Piccinnists’ he almost alone
emerged with dignity and credit; his ability to adapt to the needs of
the French stage, a far greater adjustment than Gluck had had to make,
demonstrates both courage and versatility. With the Revolution and the
withdrawal of his pension, his position became precarious, and in 1791
he left for Naples, where he was warmly welcomed. In 1792 his daughter
indiscreetly married a Frenchman of Jacobin leanings. Deemed guilty by
association in the tense and reactionary atmosphere of Naples in those
years, Piccinni, on returning from Venice where he had staged two new
works, was quite unjustifiably placed under house arrest in 1794. He
remained there in indigence and misery for four years, composing psalms,
until political changes enabled him to return to France. Financially he
fared little better; his pension was only partly restored and he was
forced to appeal to Bonaparte. By the time he was granted the post of
sixth inspector at the Conservatoire he was too ill to benefit from it.
He was one of the central figures in Italian and French opera in the
second half of the 18th century.
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