Girolamo Crescentini
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Girolamo Crescentini (
Urbania Urbania is a ''comune'' (municipality) in the Province of Pesaro e Urbino in the Italian region of Marche, located about west of Ancona and about southwest of Pesaro, next to the river Metauro. Urbania borders the following municipalities: Acq ...
, 2 February 1762 –
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 ...
24 April 1846) was a noted
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 ...
soprano A soprano () is a type of classical female singing voice and has the highest vocal range of all voice types. The soprano's vocal range (using scientific pitch notation) is from approximately middle C (C4) = 261  Hz to "high A" (A5) = 880&n ...
castrato A castrato (Italian, plural: ''castrati'') is a type of classical male singing voice equivalent to that of a soprano, mezzo-soprano, or contralto. The voice is produced by castration of the singer before puberty, or it occurs in one who, due to ...
, singing teacher, and composer.


Biography

He studied in
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 ...
with the noted teacher Lorenzo Gibelli and made his debut in 1783, quite advanced in years as a castrato. After an unlucky stay in
London London is the capital and 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 down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...
in 1785, where he did not win much approbation, on his getting back to Italy, he took part in Naples, very successfully, to a revival of Guglielmi’s opera '' Enea e Lavinia'', together with the already famous
tenor A tenor is a type of classical music, classical male singing human voice, voice whose vocal range lies between the countertenor and baritone voice types. It is the highest male chest voice type. The tenor's vocal range extends up to C5. The lo ...
Giacomo Davide, who shared Crescentini’s artistic inclinations. Thenceforwards, his career made more and more headway, reaching the apex in the nineties, and specially in 1796, when he created two roles which would remain in repertoire for some decades and then famous until present times, in either case by his quasi-pupil
Giuseppina Grassini Gioseppa Maria Camilla, commonly known as Giuseppina (or also Josephina) Grassini (8 April 1773 – 3 January 1850) was a noted Italian dramatic contralto, and a singing teacher. She was also known for her affairs with Napoleon and the Duke of ...
’s side. For him, indeed,
Nicola Zingarelli Nicola Zingarelli (; August 28, 1860 — June 6, 1935) was an Italian philologist, the founder of the Zingarelli Italian language, Italian dictionary. He was born in Cerignola (Apulia) and died in Milan. External links

* 1860 birt ...
wrote the part of ''Romeo'' in his opera ''
Giulietta e Romeo ''Giulietta e Romeo'' is a dramma per musica by composer Niccolò Antonio Zingarelli with an Italian libretto by Giuseppe Maria Foppa after the 1530 novella of the same name by Luigi Da Porto and Shakespeare's '' Romeo and Juliet''. The opera ...
'', staged at
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’s
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on 30 January, while
Domenico Cimarosa Domenico Cimarosa (; 17 December 1749 – 11 January 1801) was an Italian composer of the Neapolitan school and of the Classical period. He wrote more than eighty operas, the best known of which is ''Il matrimonio segreto'' (1792); most of his ...
composed the role of ''Curiazio'' in '' Gli Orazi e i Curiazi'', staged instead in northern Italy’s second greater theatre,
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’s
La Fenice Teatro La Fenice (, "The Phoenix") is an opera house in Venice, Italy. It is one of "the most famous and renowned landmarks in the history of Italian theatre" and in the history of opera as a whole. Especially in the 19th century, La Fenice beca ...
, on 26 December. For Zingarelli’s opera, Crescentini composed himself an aria, “''Ombra adorata aspetta''”, which would remain famous as “la Preghiera di Romeo” (Romeo’s Prayer), and which was a greatest enduring success for the singer and a permanent painful grievance for the composer, who referred to it as “my opera’s misfortune” because of its lack of “common sense”. After spending four years in
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, starting from 1797, as the director of the
Teatro Nacional de São Carlos The ''Teatro Nacional de São Carlos'' () (''National Theatre of Saint Charles'') is an opera house in Lisbon, Portugal. It was opened on June 30, 1793 by Queen Maria I as a replacement for the Tejo Opera House, which was destroyed in the 1755 Li ...
, he got back to Italy and, after a sensational execution in
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of Romeo’s Prayer, out of which he was granted a crown on stage,
Napoleon Napoleon Bonaparte ; it, Napoleone Bonaparte, ; co, Napulione Buonaparte. (born Napoleone Buonaparte; 15 August 1769 – 5 May 1821), later known by his regnal name Napoleon I, was a French military commander and political leader who ...
conferred upon him the Order of the Iron Crown of Lombardy and appointed him singing teacher of the Imperial Family. This new charge drove Crescentini to
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from 1806 to 1812, when he finally got the leave to settle in his fatherland back again and was eventually free to retire from the stage. From 1814 he devoted himself to the teaching of singing at
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’s Liceo Musicale, whose direction he was entrusted in 1817, then also in
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, and eventually at Naples’s Real Collegio di Musica, where he had, among his pupils,
Isabella Colbran Isabella Angela Colbran (2 February 1785 – 7 October 1845) was a Spanish opera soprano and composer. She was known as the muse and first wife of composer Gioachino Rossini. Early years Colbran was born in Madrid, Spain, to Giovanni Colbran ...
and
Raffaele Mirate Raffaele Mirate (3 September 1815 – November 1895) was a celebrated Italian operatic tenor who had an active career from the 1830s through the 1860s. Known for his intelligent phrasing and bright and powerful vocal timbre, he was regarded as an ...
. In 1811 he had already published a didactic essay with the title “''Esercizi per la vocalizzazione''”.


Artistic features

With Pacchiariotti, Marchesi and with the extreme offshoot of Velluti, Crescentini led castrati’s last charge: he was called, for his singing’s prodigies, the “Italian Orpheus”, and for his great, theoretical too, competence in this art, the “Nestor of the ''musici''". Decidedly unimposing on the stage (like Pacchiarotti), he was endowed with a clear, pliant and pure voice which won him the admiration of such personages as
Alfred de Vigny Alfred Victor, Comte de Vigny (27 March 1797 – 17 September 1863) was a French poet and early French Romanticist. He also produced novels, plays, and translations of Shakespeare. Biography Vigny was born in Loches (a town to which he never re ...
, who, in his story “''La vie e la mort du Capitaine Renaud ou La canne de jonc''”, wrote of “''a seraph’s voice which sprang from an emaciated and wrinkled face''”, or as the seventeen-year-old
Arthur Schopenhauer Arthur Schopenhauer ( , ; 22 February 1788 – 21 September 1860) was a German philosopher. He is best known for his 1818 work ''The World as Will and Representation'' (expanded in 1844), which characterizes the phenomenal world as the prod ...
who, in his turn, entered in his diary a voice that was “''beautiful in a supernatural way''” and provided with a full and sweet timbre. Crescentini, who was not an exceedingly wide-ranged sopranista, always shunned the rush towards the highest notes which the C7 ''whistled'' by his contemporary '' La Bastardella'' was the living representation of, and shunned as well eagerness for immoderate singing ornamentation in all the cases where it was not actually necessary to the expression of those "''infinitely minute'' nuances which form the secret of Crescentini's unique perfection in his interpretation of n''aria''; furthermore all this ''infinitely minute'' material is itself in a perpetual state of transformation, constantly responding to variations in the physical condition of the singer’s voice, or to changes in intensity of the exaltation and ecstasy by which he may happen to be inspired". Which would make any performance unfailingly different from the preceding one and from the following, too. As the champion of the true “''cantar che nell’anima si sente''”This phrase is repeatedly used by Rossini to mean the expressive singing of yore (Celletti, R., op cit, pp 21 and 142). It is rather hard to be translated, for it is referred, at the very same time, to singing which is deeply felt in the singer’s soul and which can be heard by, and therefore talk to and move, the listener’s soul as well. Crescentini headed the revenge of the belcanto of yore on the late 18th century’s singing fashion and contributed, together with Pacchiarotti, Grassini, Luísa Todi de Agujar, the tenor Giacomo David, and few others, to lay the bases for the splendours of
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 ...
''grand finale'' of two centuries’ history of operatic singing. Something of his concept of singing, as he had expressed it in the mentioned “''Esercizi per la vocalizzazione''”, is likely to have passed as well in the vocal style of Bellini operas.


Sources

* Barbier, Patrick. ''The World of the Castrati: The History of an Extraordinary Operatic Phenomenon.'' Trans. Margaret Crosland. Suffolk: Souvenir Press, 1996. * Caruselli, Salvatore (ed), ''Grande enciclopedia della musica lirica'', Longanesi &C. Periodici S.p.A., vol 4,
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, I, ''ad nomen'' * Celletti, Rodolfo, ''Storia del belcanto'', Discanto Edizioni,
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, 1983, ''passim'' * Richard Somerset-Ward. ''Angels and Monsters.'' New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004. * Sadie, Stanley (ed), ''The new Grove Dictionary of Opera'', Oxford University Press, 1992, vol 4, ''ad nomen'' * This article contains substantial material translated from Girolamo Crescentini in the Italian Wikipedia


Notes


External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Crescentini, Girolamo 1766 births 1846 deaths Castrati People from the Province of Pesaro and Urbino 18th-century Italian male opera singers 19th-century Italian male opera singers