Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896)
- Missa de N. Senhora da Conceição (1859)
Performers: Leila Guimarães (soprano); Alpha de Oliveira (soprano);
Jean-Paul Franceschi (tenor);
Piero Marin (barítono); Orquestra do
Festival do Centenário de Carlos Gomes;
Andi Pereira (regente)
---
Brazilian composer. He was the son of a provincial bandmaster, from whom
he learnt the rudiments of music and to play several instruments. He
began composing at an early age and at 18 wrote a mass that was
performed in a local church by the Gomes family ensemble. In 1859 he
went on a concert tour with his brother Sant’Ana Gomes and had
considerable success with his Hino acadêmico in São Paulo. He then left
for Rio de Janeiro against his father’s will and entered the Imperial
Conservatory of Music, where he studied composition under Joaquim
Giannini. The conservatory experience reinforced his predilection for
opera, and he soon became acquainted with the works of Rossini, Bellini,
Donizetti and Verdi, whose music exerted a profound influence on him
throughout his career. In 1860 two of his cantatas attracted great
attention. The Spaniard José Amat, then the musical director of the
Ópera Lírica Nacional, gave him a copy of the libretto of A noite do
castelo by Antônio José Fernandes dos Reis, which Gomes set to music and
produced on 4 September 1861 at the Teatro Lírico Fluminense of Rio de
Janeiro. The success of this and of his next opera Joana de Flandres
(1863) prompted his nomination for a government scholarship to study in
Italy, and in 1864 he began his studies with Lauro Rossi, director of
the Milan Conservatory. Most of the rest of his life was spent in Italy
and his compositional ideals became thoroughly italianized. Gomes’s fame
in Italy began with two musical comedies, Se sa minga (1867) and Nella
luna (1868), which give clear evidence of his ability to write in a
popular bel canto style. But it was the triumphal success of Il Guarany
at La Scala on 19 March 1870 that brought him international fame. The
opera was produced at Rio de Janeiro on the emperor’s birthday (2
December 1870) as well as in almost all European capitals in the next
few years.
Verdi heard it in Ferrara in 1872 and referred to it in a letter as the
work of a ‘truly musical genius’. But Gomes’s next opera Fosca, on a
good libretto by Ghislanzoni, produced on 16 February 1873 at La Scala,
was a failure, because the composer had become involved in a quarrel
between the defenders of Italian bel canto and the Wagnerian reformers
with whom he was included as a foreigner. A new version of Fosca,
however, had considerable success in 1878 when it was again staged at La
Scala. There followed Salvator Rosa (Genoa, 1874), on a libretto by
Ghislanzoni, written according to the prevailing taste of Italian
opera-goers, and Maria Tudor (Milan, 1879). Gomes accepted an invitation
to visit Recife and Bahia in 1880, and during this sojourn his friend
the Viscount of Taunay suggested the subject for his next opera, Lo
schiavo. He was indeed looking for another Brazilian subject, having
treated the Guarany Indians. At that time the abolition of slavery was
well under way in Brazil, and Taunay himself wrote the drama whose main
characters were to be black slaves. In spite of the librettist
Paravicini’s alterations (in order to satisfy the conventions of Italian
opera, Indians were substituted for the slaves, and the action was
transposed from the 18th to the 16th century), the première (Rio de
Janeiro, 27 September 1889) was a success. His last opera, Condor
(Milan, 1891), revealed Gomes’s orientation towards verismo. In 1892, on
Columbus Day (12 October), his last major work, the oratorio Colombo,
was presented in Rio. By then the new republican government had been
established and Gomes lost his previous official support. He accepted an
appointment to direct the local conservatory at Belém in 1896, but died
a few months later.
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