![Nicola Antonio Porpora](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/b5/Nicola_Antonio_Porpora.jpg)
Nicola (or Niccolò) Antonio Porpora (17 August 16863 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the
Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the
castrati Farinelli and
Caffarelli Caffarelli may be
*Caffarelli (castrato), stage name of the castrato Gaetano Majorano (1710-1783)Carmela Cafarelli(1889-1979) was proprietor of Cleveland Ohio's Cafarelli Opera Company
*Luis Caffarelli (born 1948), American-Argentine mathematician
* ...
. Other students included composers
Matteo Capranica
Matteo Capranica (26 August 1708 – c. 1776) was an Italian composer. Born in Amatrice, Capranica studied at the Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio a Porta Capuana in Naples under Nicola Porpora, Ignazio Prota, and Francesco Feo. After completing h ...
and
Joseph Haydn.
Biography
Porpora was born in
Naples
Naples (; it, Napoli ; nap, Napule ), from grc, Νεάπολις, Neápolis, lit=new city. is the regional capital of Campania and the third-largest city of Italy, after Rome and Milan, with a population of 909,048 within the city's adminis ...
. He graduated from the music conservatory
Poveri di Gesù Cristo of his native city, where the civic opera scene was dominated by
Alessandro Scarlatti. Porpora's first opera, ''Agrippina,'' was successfully performed at the Neapolitan court in 1708. His second, ''Berenice'', was performed at
Rome
, established_title = Founded
, established_date = 753 BC
, founder = King Romulus (legendary)
, image_map = Map of comune of Rome (metropolitan city of Capital Rome, region Lazio, Italy).svg
, map_caption ...
. In a long career, he followed these up by many further operas, supported as ''maestro di cappella'' in the households of aristocratic patrons, such as the commander of military forces at Naples, prince
Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt
Philip of Hesse-Darmstadt (20 July 1671 in Darmstadt – 11 August 1736 in Vienna) was a Prince of Hesse-Darmstadt, Imperial Field marshal and Governor of Mantua.
Life
Philip was a younger son of Louis VI, Landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt (163 ...
, or of the Portuguese ambassador at Rome, for composing operas alone did not yet make a viable career. However, his enduring fame rests chiefly upon his unequalled power of teaching singing. At the Neapolitan
Conservatorio di Sant'Onofrio and with the
Poveri di Gesù Cristo he trained
Farinelli,
Caffarelli Caffarelli may be
*Caffarelli (castrato), stage name of the castrato Gaetano Majorano (1710-1783)Carmela Cafarelli(1889-1979) was proprietor of Cleveland Ohio's Cafarelli Opera Company
*Luis Caffarelli (born 1948), American-Argentine mathematician
* ...
,
Salimbeni, and other celebrated vocalists, during the period 1715 to 1721. In 1720 and 1721 he wrote two serenades to libretti by a gifted young poet,
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 ...
, the beginning of a long, though interrupted, collaboration. In 1722 his operatic successes encouraged him to lay down his conservatory commitments.
After a rebuff from the court of
Charles VI at
Vienna
en, Viennese
, iso_code = AT-9
, registration_plate = W
, postal_code_type = Postal code
, postal_code =
, timezone = CET
, utc_offset = +1
, timezone_DST ...
in 1725, Porpora settled mostly in
Venice
Venice ( ; it, Venezia ; vec, Venesia or ) is a city in northeastern Italy and the capital of the Veneto region. It is built on a group of 118 small islands that are separated by canals and linked by over 400 bridges. The isla ...
, composing and teaching regularly in the schools of La Pietà and the Incurabili. In 1729 the anti-
Handel clique invited him to
London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...
to set up an opera company as a rival to Handel's, without success, and in the 1733–1734 season, even the presence of his pupil, the great Farinelli, failed to save the dramatic company in
Lincoln's Inn Fields
Lincoln's Inn Fields is the largest public square in London. It was laid out in the 1630s under the initiative of the speculative builder and contractor William Newton, "the first in a long series of entrepreneurs who took a hand in develo ...
(the "
Opera of the Nobility The Opera of the Nobility (or Nobility Opera ) was an opera company set up and funded in 1733 by a group of nobles (under Frederick, Prince of Wales) opposed to George II of Great Britain, in order to rival the (Second) Royal Academy of Music compan ...
") from bankruptcy.
An interval as ''
Kapellmeister'' at the
Dresden
Dresden (, ; Upper Saxon: ''Dräsdn''; wen, label= Upper Sorbian, Drježdźany) is the capital city of the German state of Saxony and its second most populous city, after Leipzig. It is the 12th most populous city of Germany, the fourth ...
court of the
Elector of Saxony
The Electorate of Saxony, also known as Electoral Saxony (German: or ), was a territory of the Holy Roman Empire from 1356–1806. It was centered around the cities of Dresden, Leipzig and Chemnitz.
In the Golden Bull of 1356, Emperor Charles ...
and Polish King Augustus from 1748 ended in strained relations with his rival in Venice and Rome, the hugely successful opera composer
Johann Adolph Hasse
Johann Adolph Hasse (baptised 25 March 1699 – 16 December 1783) was an 18th-century German composer, singer and teacher of music. Immensely popular in his time, Hasse was best known for his prolific operatic output, though he also composed a co ...
and his wife, the prima donna
Faustina, and resulted in Porpora's departure in 1752.
As his accompanist and valet he hired the youthful
Joseph Haydn, who was making his way in Vienna as a struggling freelancer.
[Griesinger, p. 12] Haydn later remembered Porpora thus: "There was no lack of ''Asino'', ''Coglione'', ''Birbante''
ss, cullion, rascal and pokes in the ribs, but I put up with it all, for I profited greatly from Porpora in singing, in composition, and in the Italian language."
He also said that he had learned from the maestro "the true fundamentals of composition".
In 1753 Porpora spent three summer months, with Haydn in tow, at the spa town
Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge
Mannersdorf am Leithagebirge is a town in Austria. It is located in the district of Bruck an der Leitha in the state of Lower Austria. Mannersdorf is seated at the base of a range of wooded hills called the Leitha Mountains (''Leithagebirge''), f ...
. His function there was to continue the singing lessons of the mistress of the ambassador of Venice to the Austrian Empire,
Pietro Correr
The House of Correr or Corraro was a major patrician family in the history of the Republic of Venice. The family belonged to the Venetian nobility.
History
Said to have originated in Torcello, the family moved to Venice in the 9th century and ...
.
Porpora returned in 1759 to Naples.
From this time Porpora's career was a series of misfortunes: his florid style was becoming old-fashioned, his last opera, ''Camilla'', failed, his pension from Dresden stopped, and he became so poor that the expenses of his funeral were paid by a subscription concert. Yet at the moment of his death, Farinelli and Caffarelli were living in splendid retirement on fortunes largely based on the excellence of the old maestro's teaching.
A good linguist, who was admired for the idiomatic fluency of his recitatives, and a man of considerable literary culture, Porpora was also celebrated for his conversational wit. He was well-read in
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
and
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance language
*** Regional Ita ...
literature, wrote
poetry
Poetry (derived from the Greek ''poiesis'', "making"), also called verse, is a form of literature that uses aesthetic and often rhythmic qualities of language − such as phonaesthetics, sound symbolism, and metre − to evoke meanings i ...
and spoke
French,
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
, and
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
.
Besides some four dozen operas, there are oratorios, solo cantatas with keyboard accompaniment, motets and vocal serenades. Among his larger works, his 1720 opera ''Orlando'', oratorio ''Gedeone'' (1737), one
mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different eleme ...
, his Venetian Vespers, and the operas ''Germanico in Germania'' (1732) and ''Arianna in Nasso'' (1733 according to HOASM) have been recorded.
Works
Vocal music
Operas
:See
List of operas by Nicola Porpora.
Oratorios
*''Davide e Bersabea'' (P. Rolli; London 1734)
*''Il Gedeone'' (text by A. Perrucci; Vienna March 28, 1737) recorded in 1999 on CPO 999 615-2
*''Il Verbo in carne'' (anon.; Dresden 1748)
Cantatas
![Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his sisters by Philip Mercier](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/29/Frederick%2C_Prince_of_Wales%2C_and_his_sisters_by_Philip_Mercier.jpg)
* 12 cantatas for solo voice and continuo dedicated to
Frederic, Prince of Wales (London, 1735)
:I. ''D'amore il primo dardo''
:II. ''Nel mio sonno almen (Il sogno)''
:III. ''Tirsi chiamare a nome''
:IV. ''Queste che miri o Nice''
:V. ''Scrivo in te l'amato nome (Il nome)''
:VI. ''Già la notte s'avvicina (La pesca)''
:VII. ''Veggo la selva e il monte''
:VIII. ''Or che una nube ingrata''
:IX. ''Destatevi destatevi o pastori''
:X. ''Oh se fosse il mio core''
:XI. ''Oh Dio che non è vero''
:XII. ''Dal pover mio core''
Instrumental music
*6 Sinfonie da camera op. 2 (London 1736)
*12 Sonatas for violin and bass op. 12
*12 Triosonatas for 2 violins and bass (Vienna 1754)
*Sonatas for cello, violins, and Bass
*Concerto for cello, strings and bass
*Concerto for cello, 3 violins and bass
Notes
References
*Griesinger, Georg August (1810). ''Biographical Notes Concerning Joseph Haydn''. Leipzig: Breitkopf und Härtel. English translation by Vernon Gotwals, in ''Haydn: Two Contemporary Portraits'', Milwaukee: University of Wisconsin Press.
External links
Porpora biography and discography*
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Porpora, Nicola
1686 births
1768 deaths
18th-century Italian male musicians
Neapolitan school composers
18th-century Italian composers
Italian Baroque composers
Italian opera composers
Italian male classical composers
Male opera composers
Voice teachers
Musicians from Naples
Joseph Haydn