Francesco Florimo (12 October 1800 – 18 December 1888) was an Italian librarian, musicologist, historian of music, and composer.Libby, Dennis; Rosselli, John. "Florimo, Francesco" in Sadie 2001.

Early life and friendship with Bellini

Florimo was born in

San Giorgio Morgeto San Giorgio Morgeto ( Calabrian: or simply ) is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Reggio Calabria in the Italian region Calabria, located about southwest of Catanzaro and about northeast of Reggio Calabria. As of 31 December 200 ...

in Calabria and enrolled at the age of 12 (or 15) at the Naples Conservatory (Conservatorio di San Pietro a Majella). There he studied with

Nicola Antonio Zingarelli Nicola may refer to: People * Nicola (name), including a list of people with the given name or, less commonly, the surname **Nicola (artist) or Nicoleta Alexandru, singer who represented Romania at the 2003 Eurovision Song Contest * Nicola people ...

and

Giacomo Tritto Giacomo Domenico Mario Antonio Pasquale Giuseppe Tritto (2 April 1733 – 16 September 1824) was an Italian composer, known primarily for his fifty-four operas. He was born in Altamura, and studied in Naples; among his teachers were Nicola F ...

and met

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, Gius ...

, a student companion who became a lifelong friend and the recipient of Florimo's fervent devotion. Florimo later dedicated several works to Bellini, including his ''Traslazione delle ceneri di Vincenzo Bellini: memorie e impressioni'', (Naples, 1876) and ''Bellini: memorie e lettere'' (Florence 1882). This material contains much that is important and indispensable, but some of the letters were partially or entirely fabricated, and several of Florimo's more dubious claims were based on 'remembered conversations' that cannot have occurred. These errors have caused numerous difficulties for subsequent Bellini scholars.

Career as a musician

At the conservatory Florimo became a singing instructor and director of vocal concerts. His conservative ''Metodo di canto'' (Naples, 1840?; Milan, 1841–1843; enlarged 1861) was influential and widely praised. It claimed to be based on the teaching methods of the castrato Girolamo Crescentini, who was still head of the Naples Conservatory singing school at the time, and was meant to restore the 'antico bello', or true Italian style of singing from the time of Alessandro Scarlatti,

Nicola Porpora Nicola (or Niccolò) Antonio Porpora (17 August 16863 March 1768) was an Italian composer and teacher of singing of the Baroque music, Baroque era, whose most famous singing students were the castrati Farinelli and Caffarelli (castrato), Caffarel ...

, and

Francesco Durante Francesco Durante (31 March 1684 – 30 September 1755) was a Neapolitan composer. Biography He was born at Frattamaggiore, in the Kingdom of Naples, and at an early age he entered the '' Conservatorio dei poveri di Gesù Cristo'', in Naples, ...

, which had been largely supplanted by the then fashionable 'la moda barocca'. In his youth Florimo composed cantatas and

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 ...

es. Among his later compositions, most notable are the ''Sinfonia funebre per la morte di Bellini'' (Milan, 1836) and his songs, many of which are in a popular Neapolitan style. Several collections of his songs appeared in the series ''Collezione completa delle canzoncine nazionali napoletane'' (published by Girard in Naples) and some songs were reprinted (ca. 1853) by

Ricordi Ricordi may refer to: People *Giovanni Ricordi (1785–1853), Italian violinist and publishing company founder * Giulio Ricordi (1840–1912), Italian publisher and musician Music *Casa Ricordi, an Italian music publishing company established i ...

in Milan. These may contain genuine transcriptions of popular material, but to what degree, it is difficult or almost impossible to determine.

Career as an archivist and historian

In 1826 Florimo became archivist-librarian of the Naples Conservatory, and under his direction the library acquired much of the bulk of its extraordinarily rich holdings, including precious music manuscripts and other archival material pertaining above all to masters of the Neapolitan school. Florimo's enlargement of this collection may be his most enduring and important legacy. He published a history of the Naples Conservatory, initially in two volumes as ''Cenno storico sulla scuola musicale di Napoli'' (Naples, 1869), and later expanded it into four volumes as ''La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatori'' (Naples, 1880–82). Upon sending the first volume to

Verdi Giuseppe Fortunino Francesco Verdi (; 9 or 10 October 1813 – 27 January 1901) was an Italian composer best known for his operas. He was born near Busseto to a provincial family of moderate means, receiving a musical education with the h ...

in 1869, Florimo wrote: "Without being either a man of science or a man of letters, I have ventured to write a book. If the world only regards my good intentions, then it will have indulgence for me, otherwise I shall be lost." Despite Florimo's significant shortcomings as a historian, much of his work remains unique and irreplaceable. Florimo's relationship with Saverio Mercadante, director of the Naples Conservatory from 1840, was often less than amicable, and after the latter's death in 1870, Florimo minimized much of his praise of Mercadante in the second edition of ''Cenno storico''. He accomplished this in many places by simply adding the word 'not'. He also attempted, unsuccessfully, to recruit Verdi as Mercadante's successor as director. At the time of the first Bayreuth Festival, Florimo published a pamphlet entitled ''Riccardo Wagner ed i wagneristi'' (Naples, 1876), which was highly critical of

Wagner Wilhelm Richard Wagner ( ; ; 22 May 181313 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, "music dramas"). Unlike most op ...

and his " Music of the Future", but after Wagner visited Naples and mentioned his own admiration for Bellini, Florimo revised and enlarged it (Ancona, 1883), now praising Wagner and only criticizing Wagner's most radical disciples. Florimo's biography of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi included many colorful anecdotes that were later revealed as hoaxes, although they furnished material for two operas broadly based on Pergolesi's career.Hucke, Helmut; Monson, Dale E. . Florimo died in Naples. His will donated to the Naples Conservatory thirty-seven volumes of correspondence, a rich source of material that has not yet been fully exploited; among these documents are some which reveal Florimo's own published fabrications.

References

Notes Sources * Rosselli, John (1996). ''The Life of Bellini''. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. . * Sadie, Stanley, editor (2001). ''

The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians ''The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians'' is an encyclopedic dictionary of music and musicians. Along with the German-language ''Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart'', it is one of the largest reference works on the history and theo ...

'', 2nd edition. London: Macmillan. (hardcover). (eBook).

External links

* * * ''Cenno storico sulla scuola musicale di Napoli''
Vol. 1
(1869) an
vol. 2
(1871)
1873 edition
at Google Books. * ''La scuola musicale di Napoli e i suoi conservatori''
vol. 1
(1880) an
vol. 4
(1881) at Google Books. * ''Bellini: memorie e lettere''. (1882
View
at Google Books.
Autographed copy of ''Vicenzo Bellini: biografia ed anedddoti''
(1883) at Google Books. * ''Riccardo Wagner ed i wagneristi'' (Ancona, 1883
View
at Google Books.
''Playbill'' feature article on ''Golden Age''
a play by

Terrence McNally Terrence McNally (November 3, 1938 – March 24, 2020) was an American playwright, librettist, and screenwriter. Described as "the bard of American theater" and "one of the greatest contemporary playwrights the theater world has yet produced," ...

which has Bellini and Francesco Florimo as characters {{DEFAULTSORT:Florimo, Francesco 1800 births 1888 deaths People from the Province of Reggio Calabria Italian musicologists 19th-century musicologists Italian male classical composers Italian classical composers 19th-century Italian composers 19th-century Italian male musicians