Pasquale Anfossi (1727-1797)
- Sinfonia (Overture) 'La Nascita del Redentore' (1780)
Performers: Ensemble Sеicеntonovеcеnto; Flаviο Cοlussο (conductor)
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Italian composer. According to the Dizionario biografico degli italiani,
he entered the Loreto Conservatory, Naples, in 1744 and there
specialized in the violin. Having left the conservatory about 1752, he
played in the orchestra of one of the small Neapolitan theatres. After
about ten years in that profession (Ginguené), he decided to become a
composer and took composition lessons from Sacchini and Piccinni. His
first opera, La serva spiritosa, was produced at the Teatro Capranica,
Rome, in Carnival 1763, but he only gradually established himself as a
leading opera composer. According to Burney, he wrote some music for
Sacchini’s operas at the composer’s request, while Ginguené and Grossi
state that Piccinni obtained opera commissions for him between 1771 and
1773 at the Teatro delle Dame, Rome, and that he achieved success only
with the third of these, L’incognita perseguitata (1773). There is no
doubt of the success of L’incognita, which gained for Anfossi a degree
of celebrity he had not previously enjoyed. During the 1770s Rome and
Venice were the main centres of Anfossi’s activities. For part of this
period he was maestro di coro at the Venetian girls’ conservatory called
the Derelitti or Ospedaletto, for which he wrote music between 1773 and
1777. It has not been possible, however, to determine from the
surviving conservatory records the exact dates of his appointment or
resignation. Commissions for Turin, Armida (1770) and Gengis-Kan
(Carnival 1777), as well as a resetting of the Turinese libretto
Motezuma for Reggio nell’Emilia in 1776 offered Anfossi the opportunity
to compose spectacle operas on exotic subjects which that theatre
favoured. A nod towards the Franco-Italian synthesis taking place in
nearby Mannheim and Stuttgart, these operas infuse italianate dramaturgy
with military and machine spectacle, pantomime and ballet. His Armida,
together with Jommelli's Armida abbandonata for Naples in the same year,
spawned a dozen subsequent versions, among them Haydn's Armida of 1783.
The tragedy Motezuma represents an early departure from longstanding
operatic conventions. Anfossi also participated in the lavish spectacle
operas the revisionist Stuttgart librettist Verazi presented for the
opening of La Scala during Carnival 1779. It is said that he went to
Paris in 1780, but if so, he composed no new operas there. The statement
in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani that he moved directly from
Paris to London is dubious. His first opera for London, Il trionfo
della costanza, was produced at the King’s Theatre on 19 December 1782,
and there is no evidence that he was in London much before then; the new
operas that he had performed in Venice and Rome between 1780 and 1782
prove that he must have been working in Italy during this period. Off
and on during the years 1782–6 he served as music director for the
King’s Theatre, where five new operas as well as several of his earlier
works were produced. He also supervised the production of operas by
other composers, including a version (first staged at the King’s in May
1785) of Gluck’s Orfeo with additional music by Handel and J.C. Bach.
His last London opera, L’inglese in Italia, was unsuccessful, being
performed only twice (20 and 27 May 1786); an extract from the General
Advertiser for 22 May reads, ‘The music evidently labours under a
tedious monotony’. By the following autumn Anfossi was back in Venice.
At the start of 1787 he was in Rome for the production of his Le pazzie
de’ gelosi, a work which, according to Gerber, caused a fresh wave of
enthusiasm for his music among the Romans. In 1790, however, his
production of new operas, uninterrupted since the 1770s, came to an
abrupt stop and he spent his last years in the service of the church. In
August 1791 he was promised the post of maestro di cappella at S
Giovanni in Laterano, Rome, on G.B. Casali’s resignation or death; he
was appointed in July 1792 and held this position for the rest of his
life.
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