Stephen Storace (1762-1796)
- Sonata (III) for the Piano-Forte, with Accompanyments (c.1788)
Performers: Mаx Bаrros (fortepiano); Stephаnie Chаsе (violin); Chrіstіne Gummеrе (cello)
Further info: Stephen Storace (1762-1796) - Pianoforte Trios (c.1788)
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English composer. His father, Stefano Storace was an Italian double bass
player, who was working in Dublin in 1750, and in London by 1758. His
mother (née Elizabeth Trusler) was a daughter of the owner of Marylebone
Gardens. After learning the violin and harpsichord as a youth, he was
sent to the S Onofrio Conservatory in Naples to study composition.
Thomas Jones, a painter who took him on sketching expeditions around
Naples in the late 1770s, indicated that Storace treated his studies
lightheartedly. His parents and his younger sister, Nancy Storace,
visited him in late 1778, before the whole family travelled in Italy. By
autumn 1779 he and his sister were performing in Florence, she singing,
he playing second harpsichord at the opera house. In Livorno they met
the Irish tenor Michael Kelly, who became their friend and colleague and
whose memoirs include many anecdotes about the Storace family.
Storace’s earliest known composition, Orfeo negli elisi, a cantata for
two voices (now lost), was from this time. In the early 1780s Storace
returned to England, where he tried to settle in both London and Bath.
His earliest published works were songs and chamber music from this
period, but his later output was to be mainly operatic. He made several
trips to Vienna, where his sister was employed as a singer. His two
opere buffe, Gli sposi malcontenti (1785, Vienna) and Gli equivoci
(1786, Vienna), were probably commissioned through Nancy’s influence on
Emperor Joseph II. Storace was in Vienna for the premières of these two
operas, in both of which his sister and Michael Kelly sang. The Storaces
became friends of Mozart and invited him to London, but this plan never
came to fruition. Although Storace was clearly influenced by Mozart,
there is no evidence that he was Mozart’s pupil, as is sometimes
claimed. On 20 February 1787, a few days before he was due to return
permanently to London, Storace was briefly jailed for disorderly
behaviour. He described the incident in a letter from prison to J.
Serres, a friend in London. Back in London, both Stephen and Nancy
Storace joined the Italian opera company at the King’s Theatre.
In 1787 they made their London operatic débuts in Paisiello's Gli
schiavi per amore, he as director. Storace’s Italian opera for London,
La cameriera astuta, lasted for only a few performances. In the same
year he sued the publishers Longman & Broderip for printing his
substitute aria ‘Care donne che bramate’ without permission, and
eventually won his case. In the summer of 1788 Storace joined the
Society of Musicians, sponsored by Samuel Arnold. On 23 August he
married Mary Hall, daughter of John Hall, historical engraver to the
king. Their only surviving child, Brinsley John, died in 1807. By the
beginning of the 1788-89 season, Storace had moved to Drury Lane, where
Thomas Linley, the house composer and a family friend, seems to have
happily delegated his responsibilities. For his first project, Storace
worked with James Cobb, Linley’s librettist, in using Dittersdorf’s
Doktor und Apotheker as the basis for an afterpiece. In the following
season they followed that success with a full-length opera, The Haunted
Tower. For the rest of his career Storace composed almost entirely for
the Drury Lane company, usually collaborating with Cobb for mainpieces
and with Prince Hoare for afterpieces. Storace and Hoare first worked
together on No Song, No Supper (1790). All of their afterpieces were
first staged as benefits for Storace’s principal singers – Nancy Storace
and Michael Kelly, and their less distinguished partners, John
Bannister and Anna Maria Crouch – and subsequently adopted into the
repertory of the theatre. Storace derived his own income from sharing
benefit nights with his librettists and by selling the copyright of his
music to publishers – normally his operas were published in vocal score
as soon as they were established as successes on stage. When Storace
died at the age of almost 34, his career in the English theatre had
lasted less than eight years. His innovations had little influence on
his contemporaries and successors, who continued to segregate drama and
music. Although some of his operas remained popular for several decades,
his contribution to the history of English opera was small.
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