![Carlo Pepoli](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Carlo_Pepoli.jpg)
Count Carlo Pepoli (22 July 1796 – 7 December 1881) was an Italian politician and journalist. He was also acclaimed as a poet, his most well-known work being the
libretto
A libretto (Italian for "booklet") is the text used in, or intended for, an extended musical work such as an opera, operetta, masque, oratorio, cantata or Musical theatre, musical. The term ''libretto'' is also sometimes used to refer to the t ...
for
Vincenzo Bellini
Vincenzo Salvatore Carmelo Francesco Bellini (; 3 November 1801 – 23 September 1835) was a Sicilian opera composer, who was known for his long-flowing melodic lines for which he was named "the Swan of Catania".
Many years later, in 1898, Giu ...
's final opera, ''
I puritani
' (''The Puritans'') is an 1835 opera by Vincenzo Bellini. It was originally written in two acts and later changed to three acts on the advice of Gioachino Rossini, with whom the young composer had become friends. The music was set to a libretto ...
'' which was given its premiere in Paris in January 1835.
Born in Bologna to the aristocratic
Pepoli family, he was active in the movement opposing Austrian rule of Italy before being imprisoned and forced into exile in France after 1831. He spent a large portion of his adult life as an exile in both Paris, where he initially taught Italian. He also lived in England, where between 1839 and 1848, he was "Professore di Letteratura italiana" at University College, London.
[ He returned to Italy briefly in 1848, then from 1859 resumed his political activities which continued to within a year of his death which took place in 1881 in his native city at the age of 85.
]
Political activity in Italy
Smart describes his activities in both Italy and France, and the connections between them, as follows:
:Perhaps the most important link between the aristocratic world of the Théâtre-Italien n Paris in the 1830sand that of the political exiles n that citywas the poet Carlo Pepoli.....The oldest son and heir of a prominent Bolognese land-owning family, Pepoli fell in with the revolutionary generation of the 1820s and served in the provisional government that briefly held power in the province of Romagna after the 1831 uprising. When the rebellion was quashed, the positions Pepoli had held as head of the Guarda provinciale and as prefect for the cities of Pesaro and Urbino earned him imprisonment in the Spielberg
Steven Allan Spielberg (; born December 18, 1946) is an American director, writer, and producer. A major figure of the New Hollywood era and pioneer of the modern blockbuster, he is the most commercially successful director of all time. Spie ...
, a sentence that was commuted to exile thanks to French intervention.[Smart 2010, p. 41]
Pepoli had married Elizabeth Fergus in England and, they returned to Italy for a short time in 1848 where he was commissioner with civil and military powers in Rome and a Deputy of the Roman Assembly.
With the ending of Austrian rule, he was able to return to Italy in 1859 and, with the country close to unification, he became a professor at the University of Bologna in 1860 and was elected deputy of the Constituent Assembly of Romagna, again becoming politically active up to 1880, serving as the Mayor of Bologna
Bologna (, , ; egl, label= Emilian, Bulåggna ; lat, Bononia) is the capital and largest city of the Emilia-Romagna region in Northern Italy. It is the seventh most populous city in Italy with about 400,000 inhabitants and 150 different nat ...
from 1862 to 1866, and as a Senator of the Kingdom of Italy
The Senate of the Kingdom of Italy () was the upper house of the bicameral parliament of the Kingdom of Italy, officially created on 4 March 1848, acting as an evolution of the original Subalpine Senate. It was replaced on 1 January 1948 by the ...
.["Pepoli, Carlo"]
on notes9.senato.it. A list of Pepoli's political offices held from 1831 to 1880.
Pepoli's activities in Paris
Smart notes that "once he arrived in Paris he renewed his acquaintance with Gioachino Rossini
Gioachino Antonio Rossini (29 February 1792 – 13 November 1868) was an Italian composer who gained fame for his 39 operas, although he also wrote many songs, some chamber music and piano pieces, and some sacred music. He set new standards f ...
and took on a few libretto commissions to supplement his main income as a tutor of Italian."[ Of these, he became best known for the libretto he prepared for Bellini's ''I puritani'', written between 1834 and its premiere in January 1835.
In Paris from 1832, he contributed to ''L'Esule'', the newspaper of the Italian exiles printed in Paris and he is known to have been a part of one of the most important salons of these years,
which became a meeting place for Italian revolutionaries such as ]Vincenzo Gioberti
Vincenzo Gioberti (; 5 April 180126 October 1852) was an Italian Catholic priest, philosopher, publicist and politician who served as the Prime Minister of Sardinia from 1848 to 1849. He was a prominent spokesman for liberal Catholicism.
Biogr ...
, Niccolò Tommaseo
Niccolò Tommaseo (; 9 October 1802 – 1 May 1874) was a Dalmatian linguist, journalist and essayist, the editor of a ''Dizionario della Lingua Italiana'' in eight volumes (1861–74), of a dictionary of synonyms (1830) and other works. He is ...
, and Camillo Cavour
Camillo Paolo Filippo Giulio Benso, Count of Cavour, Isolabella and Leri (, 10 August 1810 – 6 June 1861), generally known as Cavour ( , ), was an Italian politician, businessman, economist and noble, and a leading figure in the movement towa ...
. It was run by the exile Princess Belgiojoso who "was by far the most overtly political of the salonnières. Like Carlo Pepoli, she lived in Paris under duress", states Smart. Bellini quickly became involved with the princess' salon after his arrival in 1833 and it is there that he met Pepoli.
Along with the major operatic work, Smart notes that Pepoli "picked up" additional work including
writing the poetry for two sets of song cycles, one each for Rossini (in 1835) and for the Italian composer Saverio Mercadante
Giuseppe Saverio Raffaele Mercadante (baptised 17 September 179517 December 1870) was an Italian composer, particularly of operas. While Mercadante may not have retained the international celebrity of Gaetano Donizetti or Gioachino Rossini beyond ...
in 1836: Smart sees "the link between the two collections s beingrevealed first of all by their titles: Rossini’s rather generic ''Soirées musicales'' becomes in Mercadante’s hands the more evocative ''Soirées italiennes''". In addition, the Rossini set is supplemented by four settings of texts by Metastasio
Pietro Antonio Domenico Trapassi (3 January 1698 – 12 April 1782), better known by his pseudonym of Pietro Metastasio (), was an Italian poet and librettist, considered the most important writer of ''opera seria'' libretti.
Early life
Me ...
.[Smart 2010, p. 43]
References
Notes
Cited sources
* Senato della Repubblica Italiana
Pepoli, Carlo
Retrieved 21 January 2013 .
* Smart, Mary Ann, "Parlor Games: Italian Music and Italian Politics in the Parisian Salon", ''19th-Century Music
''19th-Century Music'' is a triennial academic journal that "covers all aspects of Western art music composed in, leading to, or pointing beyond the "long century" extending roughly from the 1780s to the 1930s." The Journal is "interested equally ...
'', Vol. 34, No. 1 (Summer 2010), University of California. pp. 39–60, o
jstor.org, by subscription or payment
Other sources
* Körner, Axel, "Pepoli, Carlo", in: 'Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani: http://www.treccani.it/enciclopedia/carlo-pepoli_(Dizionario_Biografico)/
*''Enciclopedia Treccani
The ''Enciclopedia Italiana di Scienze, Lettere e Arti'' (Italian for "Italian Encyclopedia of Science, Letters, and Arts"), best known as ''Treccani'' for its developer Giovanni Treccani or ''Enciclopedia Italiana'', is an Italian-language en ...
''
"Pepoli, Carlo, conte"
Retrieved 21 January 2013 .
*Freitag, Sabine (2003)
''Exiles from European Revolutions: Refugees in Mid-Victorian England''
Berghahn Books.
*Gavelli, Mirtide (2011)
Carlo Pepoli, Bologna, 1796 - Bologna, 1881
Certosa di Bologna
The Certosa di Bologna is a former Carthusian monastery (or charterhouse) in Bologna, northern Italy, which was founded in 1334 and suppressed in 1797. In 1801 it became the city's Monumental Cemetery which would be much praised by Byron and other ...
. Retrieved 21 January 2013 .
*Körner, Axel (2009)
''Politics of Culture in Liberal Italy: From Unification to Fascism''
Taylor & Francis.
* Leopardi, Giacomo (1923)
''The Poems of Leopardi''
(Introduction, English translation and notes by Geoffrey Bickersteth). Cambridge University Press.
*Osborne, Richard (2007)
''Rossini''
Oxford University Press.
*Weinstock, Herbert (1971), ''Bellini: His life and His Operas'', New York: Knopf.
External links
Works by and about Carlo Pepoli
on WorldCat
WorldCat is a union catalog that itemizes the collections of tens of thousands of institutions (mostly libraries), in many countries, that are current or past members of the OCLC global cooperative. It is operated by OCLC, Inc. Many of the OCL ...
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pepoli, Carlo
1796 births
1881 deaths
Italian poets
Italian male poets
Italian opera librettists
Mayors of Bologna
Members of the Senate of the Kingdom of Italy
19th-century journalists
19th-century Italian writers
19th-century Italian male writers
Academics of University College London
Male journalists
19th-century British male writers