Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito

Arrigo Boito (born February 24, 1842 in Padua , † June 10, 1918 in Milan , actually: Enrico Giuseppe Giovanni Boito ) was an Italian writer , librettist and composer .

Until 1862

Arrigo Boito was the second son of the miniature painter Silvestro Boito (1802-1856) and Giuseppina Boito, nee. Józefa Radolinska, a widowed Polish countess. At the age of nine, "Enrichetto" wrote his first compositions, including a. a polka on La donna è mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto . In 1853 he studied at the Milan Conservatory in the classes for violin, piano and composition. There he made friends in 1855 with his fellow student, the composer and conductor Franco Faccio (1840-1891). After finishing his studies he went to Paris, where he met Gioachino Rossini and Giuseppe Verdi . Here he wrote the verses of the Hymn of the Nations in 1862 , which were set to music by Giuseppe Verdi on the occasion of the World Exhibition in London. On the return trip to Milan he visited Poland , Germany and England .

1862-1871

In Milan (November 1862) he belonged for the next five years to the revolutionary intellectual movement Scapigliatura , mainly wrote (often harsh) reviews and poems. Boito wrote the libretto for Amleto for Faccio (based on William Shakespeare's Hamlet , first performed May 30, 1865 in Genoa). In 1866 Boito took part as a volunteer with Faccio in the wars of freedom against Austria . On March 5, 1868, the premiere of his first opera Mefistofele (based on Goethe's Faust. A tragedy. ) Took place at La Scala in Milan and failed (among other things because Boito, who was inexperienced in conducting, had to take over the musical direction himself). Thereupon Boito revised the work and shortened it drastically. The role of Faust, which was originally written for the baritone voice , was converted into a tenor role . The new version premiered on October 4, 1875 at the Teatro Comunale di Bologna and was an immediate success. Mefistofele is the only opera Boitos that has remained in the opera repertoire to this day, with increasing performance frequency and popularity. As a composer he was particularly influenced by Ludwig van Beethoven and Richard Wagner . He had a synthesis of German and Italian art in mind.

In 1869 Boito translated Richard Wagner's Rienzi into Italian. On November 19, 1871, he and Faccio attended Lohengrin in Bologna , the first performance of a Wagner opera in Italy. On the return journey they met Verdi at the train station at 3 a.m. and they talked about the inconvenience of sleeping on the train.

1874-1893

In 1874 Boito wrote the libretto for Amilcare Ponchielli (1834–1886) for La Gioconda , which was premiered on April 8, 1876 at La Gioconda under the direction of Faccio.

In the following years Boito devoted himself mainly to poetry and translations. In 1876 he translated Wagner's Tristan und Isolde (Italian premiere on June 2, 1888 in Bologna) and the Wesendonck lieder . The transfer of the Freischütz from Carl Maria von Weber also comes from Boito . In summer 1879 he sketched the libretto for Otello for Verdi , the first draft of which the composer received on November 18, 1879. In 1880/81 they both worked on the new version by Simon Boccanegra . In 1884 he first met the actress Eleonora Duse (1858–1924), but only fell in love with her when they met again shortly after the premiere of Otello (February 5, 1887). In 1889 Boito began work on the textbook for Verdi's last opera Falstaff . In the summer of 1890, Boito's relationship with Duse cooled off. On February 9, 1893, he celebrated the last great triumph of his life with the world premiere of Falstaff .

1893-1918

Until Verdi's death (January 27, 1901) he was on friendly terms with the composer, visited him several times a year and arranged for the world premiere of his last work, the Quattro pezzi sacri in Paris (April 7, 1898). In 1895 he worked with Giulio Ricordi and others to improve the rights of authors, in 1898 he fell in love with Velleda Ferretti. In 1903 he fell ill for the first time with angina pectoris. In 1910 he was accepted as an external member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts . In 1911/12 Boito was co-initiator of the Scala Museum. On March 17, 1912 he was appointed senator and on May 20, 1915 he voted for Italy to join the Allies in the First World War . In 1917 he visited the front, after which his angina worsened, Eleonora Duse hurried to Milan (December 24, 1917– January 17, 1918), but did not meet him. He wrote her for the last time on May 19, 1918, and died on the morning of June 10, 1918.

He never completed his work, the Nerone (begun in 1862!), Which was always in the making . Only after an arrangement by Antonio Smareglia , Vittorio Tommasini and Arturo Toscanini was Nerone premiered on May 1, 1924 under Toscanini's direction at the Scala.

As a writer, Boito at times used an anagram of his name as a pseudonym : Tobia Gorrio .

The architect Camillo Boito is the brother of Arrigo Boito.

Works

(Selection)

• L'alfier nero
• Mefistofele
• Nerone
• Novella e riviste drammatiche
• Poetry e racconti
• Il pugno chiuso

literature

• Vinicio Marini: Arrigo Boito tra Scapigliatura e classicismo. Loescher, Turin 1963
• Giovanni Morelli (ed.): Arrigo Boito (= La linea veneta nella cultura contemporanea. 11). Olschki, Florence 1994, ISBN 88-222-4288-2 .
• Domenico Del Nero: Arrigo Boito. Un artista europeo (= Le vie della storia. 20). Le Lettere, Florence 1995, ISBN 88-7166-219-9 .
• Hanno Helbing: Arrigo Boito. A music poet of Italian romance . Piper et al., Munich et al. 1995, ISBN 3-492-18326-3 .
• Costantino Maeder: Il real fu dolore e l'ideal sogno. Arrigo Boito ei limiti dell'arte (= Strumenti di letteratura italiana. 6). Cesati, Florence 2002, ISBN 88-7667-140-4 .
• Riccardo Viagrande and Arrigo Boito: “Un caduto chèrubo”, poeta e musicista (= Harmonia mundi. 4). L'Epos, Palermo 2008, ISBN 978-88-8302-352-1 .
• Stefanie Strigl: The musical encryption of evil. An investigation into the work of Arrigo Boito (= Munich publications on music history. 65). Schneider, Tutzing 2009, ISBN 978-3-7952-1278-0 (also: Munich, University, dissertation, 2008).
• Emanuele d'Angelo: Arrigo Boito drammaturgo per musica. Idea, visioni, forma e battaglie. Marsilio, Venice 2010, ISBN 978-88-317-0700-8 .

Sources and Notes

1. ↑ He conducted the world premiere of Verdi's Otello .

Web links

• Literature by and about Arrigo Boito in the catalog of the German National Library
• Works by and about Arrigo Boito  in the German Digital Library

Commons : Arrigo Boito  - collection of images, videos and audio files