Alfredo Catalani

Alfredo Catalani (19 June 1854 – 7 August 1893) was an Italian operatic composer. He is best remembered for his operas '' Loreley'' (1890) and ''La Wally'' (1892). ''La Wally'' was composed to a libretto by Luigi Illica, and features Catalani's most famous aria "Ebben? Ne andrò lontana." This aria, sung by American soprano Wilhelmenia Fernandez, was at the heart of Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1981 film '' Diva''. Catalani's other operas were much less successful.

Life and career

Born in Lucca, Catalani came from a musical family. He was trained at the Milan Conservatory, where his teachers included Antonio Bazzini. Despite the growing influence of the '' verismo'' style of opera during the 1880s and early 1890s, Catalani chose to compose in a more traditional manner, which had traces of Wagner in it. As a result, his operas (''La Wally'' excepted) have largely lost their place in the modern repertoire, even compared to those of Massenet and Puccini, whose style his own periodically resembles. (Catalani much resented Puccini's emergence and even accused Puccini, falsely, of plagiarism.)

The influence of Amilcare Ponchielli can also be recognized in Catalani's output. Catalani's reputation, like Ponchielli's, now rests almost entirely on one work. However, while ''La Wally'' enjoys occasional revivals, Ponchielli's '' La Gioconda'' has always been the more popular opera of the two (287 performances, most recently in 2008 at the Metropolitan Opera, New York, as opposed to only four for ''La Wally'', not produced there since 1909).

In 1893, upon his premature death from tuberculosis in Milan, Catalani was interred in the Cimitero Monumentale, where Ponchielli and conductor Arturo Toscanini also lie. A passionate admirer of Catalani's music, Toscanini even named one of his daughters Wally. Toscanini recorded the prelude to Act IV of ''La Wally'' and the "Dance of the Water Nymphs" from ''Loreley'' in Carnegie Hall in August 1952 with the NBC Symphony Orchestra for RCA Victor.

Almost 90 years after his death, in 1981, his work was highlighted by the release of '' Diva'', a thriller directed by Jean-Jacques Beineix which employed the aria from ''La Wally''.

Operas

*''La falce'' ("The Sickle"), Milan, 19 July 1875
*''Elda'', Turin, 31 January 1880 (radically revised as ''Loreley'')
*''Dejanice'', Milan, 17 March 1883
*'' Edmea'', Milan, 27 February 1886
*'' Loreley'', Turin, 16 February 1890
*''La Wally'', Milan, 20 January 1892

Symphonic works

*''Sinfonia a piena orchestra'' ("Symphony for Full Orchestra"), 1872
*''Il Mattino, sinfonia romantica'' ("Morning", Romantic symphony), 1874
*''Ero e Leandro, poema sinfonico'' ("Hero and Leander", Symphonic tone poem), Milan, 9 May 1885

References

Further reading

* Berrong, Richard M. (editor and translator). ''The Politics of Opera in Turn-Of-The-Century Italy: As Seen Through the Letters of Alfredo Catalani''. 1992. (Studies in the History and Interpretation of Music)
* Pardini, Domenico Luigi, Relton, Valentina (translator), Chandler, David (editor), ''Alfredo Catalani: Composer of Lucca'', 2010.
* Paolo Petronio, ''Alfredo Catalani'', (in Italian language), coll. "Personaggi della Musica" 14, pagine VII+536, ill., Zecchini Editore, Varese, 2014.

External links

Opera Italiana
Detailed biography
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*Paolo Petronio, Alfredo Catalani, musical biography, Ed.Italo Svevo, Trieste,2009
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Catalani, Alfredo
1854 births
1893 deaths
19th-century classical composers
19th-century deaths from tuberculosis
19th-century Italian male musicians
Burials at the Cimitero Monumentale di Milano
Italian classical composers
Italian male classical composers
Italian opera composers
Italian Romantic composers
Male opera composers
Milan Conservatory alumni
Milan Conservatory faculty
Musicians from Lucca
Tuberculosis deaths in Italy
Infectious disease deaths in Lombardy